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<^)e^, 4^Vj-//'r<^ 



The 

Life and Exploits 
of Jehovah 



By 

Henry M, Tichenor 



(Second Edition) 



Published by 

Phil Wagner, 

Pontiac Building 

St. Louis, Mo, 




Copyright 1915 

by 
Phil Wagner 



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fi... 



'^57^^?- 



This book is fraternally dedicated 

to the World ^s Lovers of 

Light and Liberty 

of every age 



INTRODUCTION 

MANY of the legends connected with the Jew- 
ish God Jehovah and his personal represen- 
tatives, of which the Bible is largely com- 
posed, are lost in antiquity; an incredible number, how- 
ever, still exist. Part of these are found in the present 
form of the orthodox Bible. Many more appear in those 
apocryphal books of both the Old and New Testaments 
that have been preserved. Others are found in Talmudic 
and Mussulman writings, taken, doubtless, from books 
that were at one time part of the ''sacred scriptures," 
but which disappeared long ago. Of these apocryphal 
books seventy-two of the Old Testament, and twenty- four 
of the New, are accounted for. The number lost is un- 
certain. 

That these books were formerly considered "sacred" 
and "inspired," both among the ancient Jews and the 
early Christians, is readily proven. Many of them were 
not rejected until as late as the fourth century and after, 
and the Roman Catholic Church still accepts a number 
that the Protestants have discarded. Says Origen: "It 
may have been that the Apostles and Evangelists, filled 
with the Holy Ghost, may have known what was to be 
taken from these writings and what was to be rejected; 
but for us to presume to do such a thing would be full 
of danger, not having the Spirit in the same measure 



8 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

to guide us.'' However this may be, it is an evident 
fact that the Christians of the first century believed 
books to be inspired, and therefore necessary to salva- 
tion, that the Christians of today deny. For instance, 
the "Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs" — one of the 
apocryphal books of the Old Testament containing won- 
derful stories of miracles and sorceries — is quoted by 
Paul: "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the 
dead" (Ephesians, v, verse 14). And again, "The 
wrath is come upon them to the uttermost" (First Thes- 
salonians, ii, verse 16). 

To those who, through religious prejudice, may at- 
tempt to deny some of the legends and wonders found 
in "The Life of Jehovah," the writer would state that 
there is not a single story narrated but what has its 
source in the ancient Scriptural and Rabbinical writ- 
ings. The writer has simply put them in popular lan- 
guage. None of them are his own invention. They were 
at one time all believed by the faithful followers of Je- 
hovah. 

A number of the recognized works containing these 
legends are as follows : The Apocryphal books of the Old 
Testament; the Apocryphal books of the New Testa- 
ment; the Talmud; the Koran; "Legendes de L'Ancien 
Testament," by M. Colin de Plancy; D'Herblots "Bibli- 
otheque Orientale"; Migne's "Dictionnaire des Apocry- 
phes"; Dr. G. Weil's "Biblische Legende der Musel- 
manner"; the "Chronicle of Tabari"; the ancient "Book 
of Jasher"; "Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets," 
by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, M. A. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 9 

In this work it has only been possible to introduce a 
limited number of the ancient beliefs regarding Jehovah 
and his earthly representatives that are not to be foimd 
in the Qiristian Bible, selecting those that are most im- 
mediately connected with the characters and incidents 
that make up the orthodox creeds. 

The "Life of Jehovah" is, it would seem, suificiently 
sustained by the inspired Scriptures of the Christians of 
today to become a recognized authority in orthodox re- 
ligious literature. 



THE LIFE AND EXPLOITS 
OF JEHOVAH 



CHAPTER I. 



^T^HE deeds of the great and wonderful characters of 
^ all time have been sung in song and told in story, 
but, strange to relate, the astonishing life and amazing 
exploits of Jehovah of the Jews have never been gath- 
ered in popular form for the instruction and entertain- 
ment of the public. Perhaps Time, the evolver of all 
things, waited for my appearance to do the work. 

To start with, Jehovah had no origin, and for infinite 
ages had lived all by himself in boundless space. From 
a beginningless antiquity he had leisurely lounged on a 
gold throne that rested on nothing, the sceptered sov- 
ereign of a sunless, starless, earthless, moonless uni- 
verse. The only light he had was the blaze that blew 
out of his mouth, and the only vapor was the smoke 
that steamed from his nostrils (Psalms xviii, verse 8). 
Sharp horns grew out of his fingers, and he carried a 
two-edged sword in his mouth (Habakkuk, iii, verse 
4, and Revelations, i, verse i6). If any unknown enemy 
lurked in the murky space, Jehovah was prepared to 
meet him. 

Then, at some period long before the Jews were ever 
thought of, Jehovah took a handful of nothing and 
created a host of winged angels. He created them in 



12 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

two classes, seraphim and cherubim — aristocrat and ple- 
beian. For countless ages these angels were his only 
company. He gave them all golden harps — also made 
of nothing — and they continually flew around his throne, 
that shone by the blaze that blew from his mouth, like 
flocks of pigeons, or June bugs about an electric light, 
and played and sang "Hoch der Jehovah." After living 
and reigning thus for billions of eons, Jehovah, as he 
gazed through the blackness of his boundless domain of 
emptiness, was struck by the idea of making a world, 
and filling it with every conceivable sort of creature he 
could think of. He reasoned that there was more room 
than he and the angels needed, and besides, a little ex- 
ercise wouldn't hurt him. So one Sunday morning, 
something over 6,000 years ago, he went to work, and 
by Friday night he had everything completed. It took 
him just six days to create the earth, the sun, the moon, 
all the stars, every animal and insect in existence, hills, 
valleys, forests, oceans, rivers and fish, a full grown man 
and woman, and plant a garden, which grew and ripened 
in a few minutes, for the man and woman to live in. 
All these he made out of the limitless supply of nothing 
that lay around loose. The only variation of this won- 
derful creation was, that instead of making the woman 
of nothing, Jehovah pulled a bone out of the man and 
made her. This was not because the supply of nothing 
had given out, but it was to show that woman owed 
her existence to the man. The six days' work done, 
Jehovah quit. He was tired. He went back to his 
throne and took a day's needed rest. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 18 

The next week Jehovah visited the garden. He 
pointed out the peach and cherry and plum and pear 
and apple trees that were laden with fruit. He told the 
man and woman they could eat of all these, except one 
lone apple tree that stood in the middle of the garden. 
This was an extra fine variety, and Jehovah wanted the 
apples to make hard cider for himself and the angels. 
He told them if they should eat a solitary apple from 
that tree he would cause them to grow old and finally 
get sick and die. Otherwise the man and woman could 
live forever and take things easy. 

Now among the other earthly beings that Jehovah 
had made during the six days he was at work was a 
snake that walked on his hind legs and spoke Hebrew. 
He was a captivating creature, was this snake, and one 
pleasant afternoon, while the man was taking a nap, the 
snake strolled into the garden and cast soft glances at 
the woman. Under the shade of the forbidden apple 
tree the snake and the woman coquetted while her lord 
and master slept. "Let us eat the juice of ,the gods," 
said the snake, as he reached to one of the bending 
boughs and plucked the luscious looking fruit. And 
alas! the woman did eat. Moreover, she went and 
awakened her man, and tempted him also to take a bite. 

The sudden shock of the juice of that apple was some- 
thing startling. Jehovah had squirted a secret spell into 
it. The man and the woman, for the first time, dis- 
covered that they didn't have on a stitch of clothing. 
If they had not devoured that apple this predicament 
would have passed by unnoticed, and there would not 



14 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

today be a tailor or dressmaker on earth. Our pants 
and petticoats, and all our B. V. D.s, are entirely due 
to the eating of that apple. Otherwise it would be noth- 
ing but September Morns. Skirtless and shirtless and 
sockless, we would have been a race of careless immor- 
tals if the woman and the snake had never met. This 
is from inspired authority. 

Of course Jehovah, who sees everything, took in the 
whole performance. It angered him so that he has never 
gotten over it since. He cursed the snake and the man 
and the woman. He caused the snake to forever after 
crawl on his belly. He drove the man and woman out 
of the garden and made them toil for a living. He failed 
the earth with disease and death, and in his fury doubly 
doomed the woman. 'In sorrow thou shalt bring forth 
children,'' he told her, ''and thy desire shall be to tliy 
husband, and he shall rule over thee." Jehovah is no 
suffragette. He put a guard of cherubims around the 
garden, armed with flaming swords, for fear the man 
and woman might find the way back there and eat of 
anotlier tree that, we are told, was a positive antidote 
for the spell of the forbidden fruit, and thereby upset 
Jehovah's plan of damnation. While there is no record 
of the event, the evidence is that as soon as the man 
and woman were driven far enough away Jehovah pulled 
up the garden and took it to Heaven with him. Any- 
way, it has never been located since. 

The man and woman, compelled to make a living for 
themselves, finally took up a homestead, settled down 
and began to raise a family. But Jehovah kept on their 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 15 

trail and caused them all sorts of trouble. He demanded 
sacrifices to keep him in good humor. He made them 
burgiup their choicest cattle on stone altars to appease 
his wrath. He said that nothing quieted his nerves like 
the smell of burning blood. 

The first boy born, who was named Cain, didn't take 
to stock raising — he farmed for a living, and he had 
the audacity to offer up garden truck as a sacrifice to 
Jehovah. The second boy, named Abel, raised sheep, 
and he roasted mutton for Jehovah to smell. Jehovah 
liked the smell of Abel's mutton, but detested the odor 
of Cain's burning cabbage and garlic. This started a 
quarrel between the two boys, that resulted in the elder 
killing the younger. Jehovah in his anger drove the 
elder boy off the place. He cursed him from the earth, 
and told him that chinch bugs would take his crops from 
that day on. He made a hobo of him, and Cain became 
the first wandering Willie that ever came down the pike. 

However, Cain finally struck a settlement that, it ap- 
pears, Jehovah knew nothing about. He came to the 
land of Nod, ran across a good looking girl and married 
her. Where the people of Nod came from nobody 
knows. Their creation is not revealed in the inspired 
record. Jehovah must have made them during the six 
days he was at work, and then forgot about it. 

After this human beings began to rapidly multiply 
upon the earth. The daughters of men were so capti- 
vating that the male angels became enamored of them; 
and they married them and raised a race of giants. 
These giants — half angel and half human — were a bad 



16 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

lot. They made such a rough-house of the earth that 
Jehovah repented ever having worked Hke a hodcarrier 
for six days at creating everything there is out of noth- 
ing. So he made up his mind to drown them all. How- 
ever, there was one man, by the name of Noah, who 
did not have any angel blood in his veins, that Jehovah 
rather liked; and so he concluded to drown everybody 
but Noah and his family and start things all over again. 
He also decided to save one male and one female of 
every animal, bird, bug and insect. So he told Noah to 
build a boat and fill it with provisions to accommodate 
and feed the entire menagerie for a couple of months, 
also to collect a male and female of every living species 
on the land, from a mastodon to a mosquito. All this 
Noah did. He had no trouble whatever in discerning 
their sex and loading them into the boat. 

Then the rain started. It drowned, so it is stated, 
everybody and every animal and bug that didn't take 
passage with Noah. In forty days the highest mountain 
peaks were swa^nped. To do this it poured ever a thou- 
sand feet of water every day. This was raining about a 
foot a minute. Why Jehovah took forty days to drown 
creation is somewhat of a mystery. He could just as 
easily have scooped up the whole ocean in one scoop and 
had the thing over in a few minutes. Perhaps he was 
afraid he would injure the whale that was destined to 
swallow Jonah. 

However, we should not question the ways of Je- 
hovah. We should be thankful that Noah lived to tell 
the tale. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 17 

When it was all over, and Noah had turned all the 
live stock loose, and he and his family were on dry 
land once more, the first thing he did was to build an 
altar and offer up a sacrifice to Jehovah of every animal 
excq)t pigs. Where he obtained th^n all, without kill- 
ing the brood creatures he had saved in the boat, the 
inspired record does not tell. And the savor of the roast- 
ing flesh and blood smelled so sweet to Jehovah's smoky 
nose that he vowed to never drown the world again. 
Upon hearing this good news Noah immediately raised 
a vineyard, made a few barrels of wine, and tanked up. 
He became so tipsy that he stripped himself to the hide 
and finally tumbled off in a drunken stupor. One of his 
boys, named Ham, laughed at the condition his father 
was in, and for doing so called down upon himself and 
all his posterity the wrath and curse of Jehovah. Ham, 
who was a blonde, suddenly turned black, and he and his 
offspring were doomed to chattel slavery. It is therefore 
infidelity and blasphemy to claim that slavery is not a 
divinely ordained institution. 

Again the sons of men began to raise large families, 
and the earth became peopled with many people. This 
time Jehovah made his angles keep away from the 
women. 

At this period there was only one language known 
to all the universe. Jehovah, the snake, the angels and 
the Jews all spoke the same tongue. This state of af- 
fairs would have continued to this day, and there would 
be a universal language from Jerusalem to Jersey City, 
if it had not been for a number of investigating people 



18 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

that decided to explore the skies where Jehovah lived. 
They started to build a tow^cr to reach beyond the stars; 
and Jeliovah, having heard of it, came dov^n to earth 
and looked over the pile of bricks gathered for the pro- 
posed structure. Alarmed at the prospect of human 
beings — whom he had vowed not to drown again — in- 
vading the confines of Paradise, Jehovah hurried back 
to his throne and, gathering a flock of angels, rushed 
down on the people building the tower, and with one 
stroke of magic caused them to immediately speak all 
the various languages we now have. This clever piece 
of diplomacy on the part of Jehovah is all that kept a 
brick tower reaching from earth to Paradise from being 
built. 

The consternation of the people building the tower 
can well be imagined. Shouts in Norwegian mingled 
with cries for more brick and mortar in Latin, Greek 
and Sanscrit. Yells in Gallic were answered by people 
who had suddenly become Teutonic. Some spoke Eng- 
lish, some Spanish, and some Low Dutch. Others only 
understood Russian and Pategonian. Choctaw and Chi- 
nese tried to talk to Hindoo and Japanese. Italian was 
answered back in Swedish, and Hungarian in Hottentot. 
Irish and Finnish and Flemish and Turkish jabbered 
away like a pack of magpies. Some went wild and 
talked gibberish. Whole families were unable to make 
out a word of what each other said. At last they all 
got mad and pelted each other with the bricks mtended 
for the tower. Not satisfied with raising all this bedlam, 
Jehovah capped the climax by scattering the people all 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 19 

over the earth, giving them different features, different 
complexions, and different reHgions. Only a chosen few, 
that still spoke Hebrew, remained undistttrbed. And 
they, as w^e shall hereafter discover, had a sorry time 
of it. 

A prominent character among these chosen few was 
a rich cattle raiser by the name of Abraham, who had a 
brother-in-law by the name of Lot. Jehovah liked Ab- 
raham, and promised to make him the father of a great 
nation; but, as the years rolled by, Abraham's wife, 
whose name was Sarah, bore him no children. In fact, 
according to the inspired records, Abraham was seventy- 
five years old, and Sarah sixty- four, when Jehovah made 
the promise. So, as far as offspring were concerned, 
things began to look dubious to Abraham. 

He evidently had a notion at one time to get the king 
of Egypt to help him out. The inspired record says 
that during a drought in his own country, Abraham and 
his wife, together with their cattle, journeyed into 
Egypt. When they reached there Abraham told his wife 
to pass herself off as his sister. "You are a handsome 
girl, Sarah," he said, ''in spite of your years, and the 
•chances are that the king will hear of your beauty and 
desire you, and if he learns that I am your husband he 
is liable to kill me." So Sarah passed herself off as 
Abraham's sister, and Abraham 'saved his precious skin; 
for sure enough the king discovered Sarah and brought 
her to his harem. 

But Abraham did not become a step-father to any 
posterity. The affinity did not take. Jehovah, we are 



20 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

told, "plagued Pharaoh and his house with great 
plagues" on account of the transaction. What the 
plagues were we do not know. Probably the itch. Any- 
way, Pharaoh was glad to get rid of Sarah, and at the 
same time reprimand Abraham for lying about her. 
It seems that Jehovah must have told the king who 
Sarah was at the time he plagued him with the plagues, 
and that the plagues were sent as a warning to turn 
her over to Abraham again. 

After this Abraham left Egypt and located in a place 
called Bethel. And still he remained childless. He com- 
pletely lost faith in the promised posterity, and told Je- 
hovah so. But Jehovah asked him to look at the stars, 
that he made one Wednesday afternoon years before, and 
see if he could count them. "So,'' said Jehovah, "shall 
your seed be.'' This quieted Abraham for a while. But 
he finally became nervous again over the matter, even 
as he was when down in Egypt. 

There was a colored girl in the household, by the 
name of Hagar, a decendant of Ham, whom Abraham 
had bought from a slave-dealer and given to Sarah as 
a handmaid. Hagar was young, and Sarah was now 
nearly eighty. The rest is easy to guess. 

When Sarah discovered what had happened she be- 
came furious and beat up Hagar with a flatiron, and 
drove her off the place. Hagar took to the woods. 
There Jehovah found her and made her go back and 
apologize to Sarah. Why he did not send Abraham 
some plagues, as he did to Pharaoh, divine record re- 
porteth not. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 21 

In the meanwhile nature took its course, and in due 
time Hagar gave birth to a boy and called his name 
Ishmael. Abraham was eighty-six years old when this 
happened. Thirteen years afterward, when Abraham 
was ninety-nine and Sarah nearly ninety, and all his hopes 
of posterity were centered on the boy Ishmael, Jehovah 
appeared again and told Abraham that Sarah was soon 
to become a mother. This time, so the inspired record 
runs, "Abraham fell upon his face and laughed." ''Shall 
a child," said he to Jehovah, "be born to him that is 
an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety 
years old, bear?" 

It did look like a joke. 

Then Abraham did the squarest thing told of him. He 
begged Jehovah to let Ishmael be his legal heir. But 
Jehovah wouldn't listen to it. Did not Ishmael have 
Ham's blood in his veins, and had not Jehovah cursed 
Ham for laughing at Noah when he was so drunk that 
he took all his clothes off and ran around stark naked? 
No — Ishmael was a fairly good sort of a boy, and for 
Abraham's sake Jehovah wouldn't sell him into slavery, 
but he would not do for heir-apparent. So a few days 
later, as Abraham sat in his tent door during the noon- 
hour, and Sarah was inside washing the dishes, Jehovah 
appeared again, accompanied by three male angels. Ab- 
raham hastened to prepare a lunch for the celestial vis- 
itors. They were evidently hungry after their long 
journey, for the inspired record says they ate a whole 
calf, besides large portions of bread and butter and milk. 
The lunch was served out of doors, for, we are told, 



22 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

as soon as the angels had devoured it they asked where 
Sarah was. 

'Inside the tent," said Abraham. 

Then one of the angels repeated Jehovah's promise, 
that Sarah would soon become a mother. This even 
made Sarah, who overheard the remark, burst out laugh- 
ing. But it happened, nevertheless, and the antiquated 
Sarah finally had a boy baby and called him Isaac. What 
influence the angels may have had in the affair is not 
narrated. 

About this time Jehovah made up his mind to demol- 
ish a place by the name of Sodom, together with all its 
inhabitants, where Lot, Abraham's brother-in-law, and 
his wife and family lived. Sodom was too morally rotten 
to tell in print. On account of his relationship to Abra- 
ham Jehovah concluded to save Lot, so he told him to 
take the folks and hurry away and not to dare look back 
at what was going on. When they were about a mile out 
of town Lot's wife could not resist the temptation to take 
a look — and she did. It was a startling and terrible scene. 
There, on his throne in Heaven, sat Jehovah, emptying 
buckets of fire and brimstone on Sodom. He burned up 
the last inhabitant, and all their cattle. Then, for her 
crime of curiosity, Jehovah pickled Lot's wife as he would 
a barrel of pork, and stood her as a warning example a 
pillar of salt along the road. 

What at last became of her the inspired record does 
not tell. Probably the roaming herds of sheep and goats 
licked her up. 

This left Lot a lone widower, and he took to drink. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 23 

He had two old maid daughters. He became gloriously 
drunk, and had children by both of them. Jehovah had 
doubtless run out of brine, or he would have pickled 
the rest of the Lot family. 

Shortly after this Isaac was born. Abraham was just 
a hundred, and his wife past ninety, when this event oc- 
curred. 

When Sarah actually discovered that she had a child 
of her own she drove Hagar off the premises again. 
Hagar and her son Ishmael fled into the wilderness and 
there they nearly died of thirst Fortunately Jehovah 
happened to be passing that way and he caused a well 
of water to immediately appear. However, he did not 
send Hagar back to Sarah this time. He gave Ishmael 
a bow and arrow and told him to hunt for a living. 

The years went on, and one day, when Isaac was a 
good-sized boy, Jehovah appeared and told Abraham that 
he was in great need of a bloody sacrifice to satisfy his 
feelings. He ordered Abraham to get his butcher knife, 
saddle his donkey, and take Isaac with him to the top 
of a certain mountain and there offer up the boy. It 
took Abraham three days to make the trip. When he 
finally reached there he built a stone altar, heaped it with 
dry wood, grabbed Isaac and tied him down. Just as 
he was ready to cut Isaac's throat and start the fire, 
one of Jehovah's angels suddenly appeared, leading a 
goat, and told Abraham that Jehovah was only joking 
— that he only wanted to see if he really was holy enough 
to butcher his boy to satisfy Jehovah's appetite for 
blood. 



24 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

''Here," said the angel, "take this goat that Jehovah 
has sent, and offer him instead of Isaac/' 
This, we are told, Abraham did. 



CHAPTER 11. 

A NUMBER of interesting incidents regarding Jeho- 
^ ^ vah's career at this period were dropped out ages 
ago from the divinely inspired record. The original story 
of the creation of Adam and Eve, the first man and 
woman, as handed down by the ancient rabbis, the Tal- 
mud, and the Apocryphal book, Little Genesis — all of 
which bear the same evidence of divine inspiration as 
the records accepted today by the learned theologians — 
differs considerably from the narrative contained in the 
orthodox scriptures. 

According to the original account — ^which was very 
precise as to every detail — ^Adam was created on Friday 
afternoon at 3 o'clock. The four archangels, Gabriel, 
Michael, Israfiel and Asrael, were required by Jehovah 
to bring the necessary dust from the four quarters of 
the earth to make Adam. The earth was flat in those 
days and had four comers. 

When Jehovah received the dust from- the four arch- 
angels he made the body of Adam at once. When thus 
completed Adam was so handsome that the angels, who 
had flocked from Paradise to witness the event, were 
knocked speechless — there wasn't a creature in Paradise 
that could compare with him for looks. For size he 
was simply a whopper. His body covered the whole 
earth, and if he stood up He would reach to the seventh 



26 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Heaven — wherever that is. There was some dust left 
over, that Jehovali didn't need in forming Adam, so 
locusts were made of it. 

Adam as yet was not alive, neither did he have any 
insides. He was simply a bust of skin and bones. In 
this condition, lifeless but lovely, say the ancient rabbis, 
Adam had lain stretched out on exhibition for forty 
years, when Satan wandered along and took a look at 
him. Satan was amazed — he had never seen the like in 
Heaven or Hell. He carefully examined the mammoth 
form and found it was hollow. Then he went to Adam's 
mouth and stepped in. After navigating all through his 
anatomy he came out and told some angels that were 
gazing at the sight that there was nothing to fear — 
that the creature was empty all the way through. Then 
was when Jehovah put on the finishing touches — he blew 
the breath of life into Adam and made a live Jew of 
him. The breath went down his throat and into his 
belly, and wherever it went then and there th^ vital 
parts appeared. Liver and lungs, heart, kidneys, and 
aill the rest of the necessary equipment leaped into exist- 
ence, blood flowed through his system, Adam sneezed, 
opened his eyes and said, "Praise be to Jehovah !" 

The Talmud declares that when Adam stood up his 
head protruded into Heaven, and that he remained thus 
until Jehovah pressed him down at the time of the Fall. 

Tlie ancient Talmudists do not all agree with the 
Genesis account of the creation of Eve from a rib taken 
out of Adam while he was taking a nap; they assert that 
Adam had a tail, which somewhat marred his beauty, 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 27 

so Jehovah cut it off and, not knowing what else to do 
with it, made a woman of it. He may have made two 
women out of Adam's tail, for the Talmudists tell us 
that Adam had two wives, Lilith and Eve. 

Lilith, so the story runs, quit Adam's bed and board 
before the family was driven from Eden, and married 
the Devil — who had made all the trouble. She lived 
to raise a large family of children, who were called 
Jinns — half devil and half himian. These Jinns could 
appear like men and women when they so desired, or 
could go about unseen. An ancient account of the build- 
ing of King Solomon's temple, that is left out of the 
Bible, says that Solomon employed these Jinns to do the 
heavy work. They were husky fellows, and could carry 
tons of stone up a ladder. Besides, they knew how to 
hammer and cut rock without making a particle of noise. 

Another thing that has been left out of the Book of 
Genesis— and which would settle the long-disputed ques- 
tion as to where the sons of Adam obtained their wives 
— is this : Eve, who clung to Adam after he was driven 
from Eden, bore fifteen thousand boys and a like num- 
ber of girls. These children came in twin lots, one boy 
and one girl at each birth, and when they grew up each 
hoy married his twin sister. Here, say the old rabbinical 
writers, is where Cain and Abel first fell out. Cain 
wanted to marry his own twin sister, as the rest of the 
boys had done, but Adam decided to change the program 
and wanted Cain to marry Abel's twin and Abel to 
marry Cain's. 

According to the apocryphal book, the "Life of Adam 



28 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

and Eve/' which was originally a part of tlie inspired 
record, Adam died a very rich man. Before his death 
he called his children to his bedside, the whole thirty 
thousand of whom were present save Cain and Abel, and 
made a will The angel Gabriel flew down from Heaven 
to receive it, accompanied by an escort of sixty-tv/o mil- 
lion other angels, each provided with clean white sheets of 
parchment and goose-quills. The will was sealed by 
Gabriel and witnessed by the sixty-two million angels. 
It would have taken a cunning lawyer to break that will. 

Adam, we are told, was buried in the Island of Cey- 
lon, and lions guarded his sepulchre. When the flood 
came Noah went and dug up the remains and brought 
them and loaded them into the ark. Then, wh^i the 
rain was over, and the ark had settled on Mount Ararat, 
Noah took Adam's remains to where the city of Jeru- 
salem was afterwards built — and which was declared 
by the inspired writers to be the center of the flat earth 
— and there dug a deep grave and buried him. 

One of Adam's descendants was a man by the name 
of Enoch. One day, says Genesis v, verse 24, of the 
divinely inspired record, Enoch went out walking with 
Jehovah, and walked to Heaven with him. Also, we 
are told, when he was a young man of sixty-five he be- 
came the father of a boy named Methusaleh, who lived 
to the ripe age of nine hundred and sixty-nine. 

The original story, as told by the rabbis, differs from 
the Bible account. Jehovah did not take Enoch to 
H^ven — he slipped in there in company with an angel. 
Jehovah did not even know that he was on the premises 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 29 

until he had been there for quite awhile. It seems that 
Enoch never did like the earth as a residence place. He 
was a tailor by trade, so the Talmudists state, and as 
most of the men those days wore home-made clothes his 
income was small. In fact, all that the fashion plates 
contained in Enoch's time were a breechclout, a shirt 
and a pair of sandals; so, even at best, tailoring business 
was never brisk. 

Enoch, like many other poor people, was a very pious 
man. There was nothing in sight for him en earth but 
a life of poverty, so he cast his mournful eyes on the 
next world. One day the angel Azrael walked into 
Enoch's shop and said to him: 

'1 am the Angel of Death, and I desire thy friend- 
ship. On account of thy great piety, thou mayest make 
me a request which I shall accomplish." 

Enoch answered : 'T desire that thou shouldst take my 
soul." 

This was before suicide had been introduced as a 
means of relief for the down-and-outs. 

The angel replied : "I have not come to thee for this 
purpose; thy time is not yet arrived at its appointed 
close." 

This was a great disappointment to Enoch, who was 
so sick and tired of staying on earth that he didn't know 
what to do. Finally he said to the angel, * 'Can't you 
take my soul for a little while, and then return it to my 
body?" 

The angel replied, "I cannot do this without Jehovah's 
consent." 



30 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

''Go and ask him/' said Enoch. 

"All right/' said the angel, 'Til do that much for 
you, anyway.'' 

So the angel flew back to Heaven and told Jehovah 
what Enoch wanted. 

"Is he pious and orthodox?" asked Jehovah. 

"He's full of it," replied the angel. 

"All right," said Jehovah, "take him on a little trip. 
Don't bring him here, but take him to Hell. That may 
satisfy him with his lot on earth." 

So the angel flew back to earth and told Enoch to 
come along. Enoch kissed his wives good-bye and said 
they needn't sit up for him — ^that he might not get back 
till the next day. 

But Enoch, it appears, did not like Hell, and so was 
willing to return home again. But he wasn't satisfied. 
He didn't propose to give up. So he put on more piety 
than ever and let his business go to smash. This is what 
makes a real saint — sackcloth and ashes, with a regular 
diet of cornbread and water. And sure enough, who 
should turn up one fine morning but the same angel. 
This time Enoch put the proposition up bold. 

"Say," said he to the angel, "I've seen Hell and now 
I want to see Heaven." 

"Jehovah won't stand for it, until you are dead," an- 
swered the angel. 

"Kill me, then," said Enoch, handing the angel an ax. 

"What," replied the angel, "and I go to Hell for mur- 
der?" 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 31 

''Can't you sneak me into Heaven, just for a few min- 
utes?'' asked Enoch. 

The angel scratched his chin and thought a moment. 

''It's risky," said he, "but the gatekeeper is a care- 
less angel, and besides he is a good friend of mine. For 
your sake I will try it, even if I am caught and get my 
wings clipped for doing it. 

Peter had not as yet appeared and been given the job 
of attending the gates. 

So the angel took Enoch — took him just as he was, 
without even having taken a bath or changing his shirt ; 
and, as luck would have it, the two made their way 
through the pearly gates without being noticed. 

But the angel was uneasy and would not let Enoch 
get very far from the entrance, and it wasn't over fif- 
teen minutes or so before he insisted on escorting Enoch 
back to earth. But Enoch was in no hurry to go. Then 
the angel got nervous, and tried to drag Enoch over the 
jasper wall. Enoch balked — he pulled back and vowed 
he wouldn't budge. The noise of the struggle soon 
reached the throne and Jehovah jumped from his seat 
and ran down the gold street to see what was the trouble. 

For once in his life Jehovah didn't get mad. Gen- 
erally, in a case of this kind, he sent a flood, or fire and 
brimstone, or some other sort of plague, but this time 
he took it all good-natured. Probably the sight of 
Enoch, dressed in nothing but an old shirt, together 
with his long hair and tangled whiskers struck him as 
something too funny to get mad about; and so he told 
Enoch he could stay if he wanted to. 



32 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

The ancient rabbis also give a somewhat different 
biography of Abraham than is found in the Genesis ac- 
count. An exhaustive monograph of the traditions re- 
lating to Abraham has been written by Dr. B. Beer, of 
Leipzig, entitled ''Leben Abraham's nach Auffassung der 
judischen Sage.'* From this work, which is very exact 
and authoritative, S. Baring-Gould, in his "Legends of 
the Patriarchs," has given an English version. 

The rabbis say that Abraham was the son of Terah, 
a general of Nimrod's army, and his wife Amtelai. On 
the night in which Abraham was born his father gave a 
feast, at which many soothsayers and magicians were 
present. At the hour of Abraham's birth an unusual star 
appeared in the eastern horizon. This star acted very 
strangely— it ran from one part of the sky to another. 
Jehovah doubtless had a string tied to it and was pulling 
it around to attract attention. The soothsayers gazed in 
astonishment at the sight. 

"This," said they, "is an omen from Jehovah, fore- 
telling that General Terah's new-born son will become 
a great and powerful soothsayer. " 

Now these soothsayers did not like competition in 
their profession; so they hastened early the next morn- 
ing to King Nimrod, and told him that they had read 
the signs of the heavens, which declared that General 
Terah's son would become a mighty warrior and seize 
his kingdom; and they therefore advised Nimrod 
to have the baby slaughtered at once. So the king sent 
a large offering of gold and silver to General Terah, and 
asked his son in exchange. But General Terah refused 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 33 

the offer. Then the king threatened to burn up all of 
General Terah's houses and barns unless he would sur- 
render the child. In the meantime one of General Terah's 
female slaves had given birth to a son. This child was 
turned over to the king's officers, who, belie\ang it to be 
young Abraham, brought it before King Nimrod and cut 
its throat. 

Another account says that Nimrod, being a soothsayer 
himself, had before read in the stars that a child would 
be born who would oppose his power and religion; so 
he built a maternity hospital, sixty ells high and eighty 
ells broad, into which were gathered all approaching 
mothers. The nurses were commanded to put to death 
all the baby boys, but to make handsome presents to the 
mothers of girls. The rabbis state that seventy thousand 
boy babies were thus slaughtered. A number of Jeho- 
vah's angels, hearing of this, implored him to stop this 
wholesale murder of infants. 

"I know all about it, and why King Nimrod is doing 
it," said Jehovah; *'but just watch and see how I take 
care of Abraham when he is bom." 

Shortly after, General Terah's wife, Amtelai, found 
herself pregnant; she concealed her condition as long as 
possible, remaining in bed and pretending to be ill; but 
when she could conceal it no longer Jehovah came to 
her, and caused the child to creep up behind her breasts, 
so that her appearance in public suggested nothing un- 
usual. When the time for her delivery arrived, Amtelai, 
guided by Jehovah, wandered at night in the desert 
until she came to a cave; this she entered, and the next 



34 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

morning Abraham was born. His face shone, the rabbis 
declare, so that the cave was as light as day. This was 
easily accounted for, as Jehovah, together witli a niim>- 
ber of angels, was present. 

In order to avoid capture, and the death of the child, 
Jeliovah sent the mother immediately home, and left the 
angel Gabriel to nurse the child. Gabriel, who, as is 
well known, is a male angel, had no trouble whatever 
doing so ; he let the baby suck his forefinger, from which 
flowed an abundant supply of milk. He also bored two 
holes in the cave, from which dropped oil and flour to 
nourish Abraham. The boy had a ravenous appetite 
from the start, and grew with astonishing rapidity, for, 
say the rabbis, when he was only ten days old he was 
able to walk out of the cave. 

His mother, making a secret visit to the cave, and 
finding her baby gone, was filled with alarm and anguish. 
Wandering along the bank of a river, she met Abraham, 
but did not recognize in the young man her missing 
child; so she asked him if he had seen anything of a 
little baby boy. Abraham immediately recognized the 
woman as his mother, and answered, *'I am he whom 
you seek." 

"Is it possible ?'' exclaimed the mother. "How did you 
manage to grow to such a height and be able to walk 
and talk in ten days? Besides, where did you obtain 
the clothes you are wearing?" 

"The God Jehovah did all this for me," answered Ab- 
raham. 

Upon this Amtelai hastened to her husband, and told 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH. 35 

him tlie strange story; and her husband noised it about 
until it reached King Nimrod's ears. 

Thereupon the king called a council of his soothsayers 
and magicians to see what should be done. After due 
deliberation the soothsayers and magicians told him that 
he, the great king of Babylon, had nothing to fear from 
a child ten days old. But Nimrod was not satisfied. 
Then Satan, who, dressed in a black robe such as the 
magicians wore, had entered the palace unseen, walked 
up to the king and said : 

''Let the king at once arm all his troops and march 
against this precocious infant/' 

This advice suited Nimrod and his army was ordered 
to capture Abraham. 

But when Abraham saw the hordes of soldiers ap- 
proaching he called to Jehovah, and the angel Gabriel 
— his wet-nurse — flew down and seized Abraham, and 
carried him into a thick cloud. This so frightened Nim- 
rod's soldiers that they fled to Babylon in a panic. Then 
Abraham climbed on Gabriel's shoulders, who flew to the 
gates of the city, arriving there ahead of Nimrod's panic- 
stricken troops. Entering the city, Abraham, in the 
name of Jehovah, publicly defied Nimrod and dared him 
to do his worst. Nimrod, when he heard of it, sent for 
General Terah, and told him to bring his son to the 
palace. When Abraham arrived there he walked boldly 
into the throne-room and cursed King Nimrod to his 
face. The king tumbled off the throne in a fit, in which 
condition he remained for several hours. At the same 
time the stone images of the Babylonian gods, of which 



36 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

the palace was full, all fell to the floor and were broken 
to fragments. 

When Nimrod finally came out of his spasm, and see- 
ing Abraham still present, he said to him, ''Was that 
you or your god talking, that sent me into convulsions?'' 

Abraham answered, *'It was I, the servant of Jeho- 
vah." 

For awhile after this King Nimrod let Abraham alone. 
Finally, however, he braced up again, and determined at 
all hazards to get rid of so powerful a magician and 
enemy as Abraham; so he had him arrested and thrown 
into a dungeon. There Abraham remained for ten days 
in solitary confinement with neither food or drink served 
him. 

But the angel Gabriel was still caring for the boy, 
born in the cave, that had sucked milk from his finger; 
and he brought him food every day, and also caused 
a fountain of pure water to bubble up through the floor 
of the cell. 

At the end of ten days Nimrod called his soothsayers 
and magicians together, and it was decided to burn Ab- 
raham alive; so the king ordered the jailer to bring him 
forth. The jailer answered that it was impossible that 
Abraham could be still living, as he had been given 
neither meat nor drink. But Nimrod answered, ''Bring 
him alive or dead.'' 

Then the jailer went to the prison door and cried, 
"Abraham, livcst thou?" 

"I live," answered Abraham, "and am hale and hearty." 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 37 

The jailer, in astonishment, replied: ''How did you 
manage to keep alive without food or drink ?'' 

''Jehovah's angel fed me, and gave me drink,'' an- 
swered Abraham. 

The jailer, believing Abraham, and fearing such won- 
derful magic, opened the door of the prison, and went 
to Nimrod and told what he had seen and heard. Nimr 
rod at once ordered his executioners to cut off the jail- 
er's head. But the jailer called to Jehovah, and the 
sword, in the hands of the executioner, flew into a thou- 
sand pieces. At this moment Abraham himself walked in. 

"Who is your god?" demanded Nimrod. 

"He is a god who can kill, and make aHve again," an- 
swered Abraham. 

"I can do that," exclaimed Nimrod, and he ordered 
two prisoners to be brought in; one he slew with his 
sword, the other he spared. 

Then spoke Abraham: "See what my god, Jehovah, 
can do," and he commanded a man that had been dead 
and buried four years to come out of his grave and bring 
him a white rooster, a black raven, a green pigeon and 
a gayly colored peacock. In a few minutes in walked 
the dead man, whom Nimrod knew in life and recog- 
nized, with all the birds named, in his arms. Then Ab- 
raham took a carving knife that he carried in his belt, 
seized the birds, and cut off their heads. These heads 
he laid on a table, but the bodies of the birds he cut 
into small pieces. Then he made certain passes over 
the heads of the birds, muttered a few mystic words to 
Jehovah, and lo! new bodies immediately sprouted on 



38 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

the heads, tlie rooster crowed, the raven cawed, the 
pig-eon peeped, and the peacock squawked; they were 
all just as good as new. 

"Now," said Abraham to Nimrod, ''you do the same." 

Nimrod gave it up. 

And yet there are people today who doubt the ability 
of one of Jehovah's priests to turn bread and wine into 
flesh and blood. 

Nimrod was highly incensed at this exhibition of 
magic and ordered that Abraham, together with an older 
brother, named Haran, should be burned. (Haran, the 
brother of Abraham, and Nahor, another brother, are 
mentioned in (jenesis xi, verse 26). Therefore Abra- 
ham and Haran were seized and stripped, their hands 
and feet bound with ropes, ready to be thrown into the 
fire. But when Nimrod's servants approached the fur- 
nace with their prisoners, Jehovah caused the flames to 
shoot out like tongues of serpents, and, coiling around 
the servants, drew them into the flames and consumed 
them. Abraham and Haran remained unharmed. 

Upon this Satan, who was standing by, took Nimrod 
aside and instructed him how to build a catapult that 
would throw the victims into the fire in spite of any 
sorcery. Nimrod immediately had his carpenters build 
the machine, and, as Satan had declared, it threw Abra- 
ham and Haran in the midst of the flames. 

Now Haran, say the rabbis, was undecided in his re- 
ligious convictions. Sometimes he worshiped the heathen 
gods, sometimes Jehovah. This proved to be his undo- 
ing; for no sooner had his body landed in the middle 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 39 

of the blazing furnace than he made a blunder and called 
on the heathen gods to help him. There was nothing 
doing — ^poor Haran was burnt to ashes. 

Alas! how many millions of human beings have per- 
ished in torture and agony through worshiping the 
wrong god, or worshiping the right god the wrong way ! 

But Abraham, calling upon Jehovah for assistance, was 
saved. The flames were unable even to raise a blister 
on his skin. The ropes that bound his hands and feet 
v/ere consumed, but even his shirt wasn't scorched. For 
three days, so great was the fire kindled, the flames and 
sparks flew skyward; and for these three days, just to 
show what he could do, Abraham promenaded through 
the flames. 

At the end of the three days, seeing Abraham un- 
harmed. King Nimrod cried to him, "Abraham, servant 
of Jehovah, come forth to me." 

And Abraham came forth. 

Then the king said to him, "How is it that thou art 
not consumed?" 

And Abraham answered, "Jehovah, whom I serve, 
hath preserved me." 

No sooner had he said this than Jehovah extinguished 
the fire, and a beautiful garden appeared in its place, 
filled with all manner of flowers and fruits. "The pile," 
say the rabbis, "was like a grove of flowering shrubs to 
look upon, and angels descended and took Abraham and 
seated him in the midst." 

The Mussulman account tells us that "'Nimrod could 
not see into the fire, so he ascended a high tower in his 



40 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

palace, and from the top looked down into the furnace, 
and saw that in the midst was a garden with flowers 
and a fountain of sparkling water, and Abraham seated 
on the grass beside the spring, conversing with an angel !" 
(Chronicle of Tabari.) 

After this comes the story of Nimrod's attempt to 
reach Heaven in a box, to which was attached four mon- 
strous vultures. 

His object was to kill Jehovah. 

Nimrod took one of his court attendants with him on 
the trip, and, aftei sailing through the air for a day 
and night, he told the attendant to open a window built 
in the box and take an observation. 

"What do you see?" asked Nimrod. 

''I see the earth," replied the attendant. 

After another day and night the attendant looked 
again, and reported nothing in sight but the earth. On 
the third day, however, he looked out and saw nothing 
at all. Then Nimrod went to the window and shot three 
arrows straight upward; and soon the arrows fell back 
with blood on them. 

"I have killed Abraham's god," said Nimrod. 

But he was mistaken — he never grazed him. The ar- 
rows, we are told, struck a fish which was being carried 
by the wind, that had caught it up out of the sea (Dr. 
Weil's Biblische Legende) . 

Then Jehovah planned a sweet revenge on Nimrod. 
The way he went at it is described in the Chronicle of 
Tabari. First, Jehovah attacked Nimrod and all his 
army with vast swarms of flies. These flies flew in the 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 41 

faces of the soldiers; and they were so numerous that 
the soldiers could not see one another; they stung the 
horses so that they went mad, and stumbled and fell; 
and soon both men and horses stampeded in a wild flight. 

Nimrod managed to escape the plague of flies and 
found his way to the palace; but he was pursued there 
by a gnat that Jehovah had specially prepared for the 
occasion. This gnat was blind of one eye and lame of 
one leg; and as soon as Nimrod had seated himself on 
his throne the gnat settled on his knee. Then the king 
struck at it to kill it ; but the gnat, charmed by Jehovah, 
and with a duty to perform, arose swiftly through the 
air, flew up Nimrod' s nose, bored its way through his 
head, and began to eat his brains; from which attack 
Nimrod suffered in great agony. 

He would madly beat himself on the head, and while 
he did this Jehovah's gnat would cease gnawing at his 
brain; but the moment he quit beating his head, the 
gnat would get busy again ; so Nimrod had no rest from 
his torment, save when being hit on the head. In order 
to sleep he had to have an attendant continually ham- 
mering him. His condition became so bad that finally 
he had a big blacksmith's hammer brought to his room, 
with which princes and nobles smote him continually. 
The harder the blows, we are told, the greater was the 
relief obtained. 

In this condition Nimrod lived and reigned for five 
hundred years. Prior to this he had been on the throne 
a thousand years, and had scarcely ever known a sick 
day. He might have been there yet if Jehovah's gnat 



42 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

had not, in spite of being disturbed by the hammerings, 
finally managed to kill him. 

This story of Nimrod and the gnat is found in both 
the Mussulman traditions, and the records of the Jewish 
Rabbis of Titus. 

Nor should believers find it difficult to accept all these 
stories as divinely inspired and of actual occurrences, 
whether found in apocryphal works or in the present 
orthodox Bible, because of apparent contradictions; for 
the Bible itself is full of contradictions as apparent as 
these. We should "walk by faith, not by sight," said 
St. Paul. And faith is able to account for all things — 
or even more. 



CHAPTER III. 

" /I ND there was war in Heaven; Michael and his angels 
-^^ fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought 
and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place 
found any more in Heaven, And the great dragon was 
cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, 
which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into 
the earth, and his angels were cast out with him'' (Revelor- 
tions, xii, 7-9). 

The reason of the Devil's revolt, according to ancient 
tradition, was because he was ambitious to become as 
great a god as Jehovah. The war ended in the Devil's 
defeat, and the angels that had stood by Jehovah, and 
fought for him, made a great celebration in honor of 
their victory. 

According to the Talmudists, Satan's name, when he 
was an angel of heaven, was Sammael; and the rabbis 
generally designate him by this name. He was one of 
the Seraphim, and had six wings to fly with. 

The Rabbi Bechai, in his commentary on the Five 
Books of Moses, says that Sammael was not driven out 
of Heaven until after he had tempted Adam and Eve; 
then Jehovah drove him hence, and put a curse upon 
him. In his struggle Sammael grappled with the arch- 
angel Michael, and would have dragged him down with 



44 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

liim had not Jeliovali himself rushed to Michaers assist- 
ance. 

One i almudic authority says that aU of Satan's angels 
fell to earth in a heap, and that Jehovah followed them 
ana consumed them with a touch ot his little linger. 

Alter batan s defeat and fall Jehovah created Hell as 
an abode tor the lost, but, it seems, so power tul a creature 
IS Satan, that he was unable to hold him there; therefore 
Satan roams the earth at will. 

Satan, after Adam was driven from Eden, took to him- 
self four wives — Lilith, former wife of Adam; Naama, 
the daughter of JLamech; and two other women by the 
names of Igereth and Machalath. Each gave birth to 
great hosts of devils — or Jinns, as they were called. These 
lour sets of J inns rule the four seasons. Lilith, we are 
told, was the mother of four hundred and seventy-eight 
legions of these devils. Maybe it was some of her nu- 
merous progeny that Jesus, ages afterwards, chased into 
the swine. 

Other accounts, of Mussulman source, declare that 
when Jehovah made Adam he commanded all the angels 
to worship him as their king and superior, but that Satan 
refused, saying, '*I will not adore Adam, for he is made 
of earth, and I oi fire, therefore I am better than he"; 
whereupon Jehovah cursed Satan, and turned him from a 
beautiful angel into a hideous devil. 

Both Jewish and Mussulman traditions, however, gen- 
erally agree that the fall of Satan and his angels preceded 
the creation of man. Some date it on the first, and some 
on the second day of creation. Manasseh Ben Israel says 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 45 

that Jehovah has placed tht devils in the clouds that they 
might torment the wicked with thunder and lightnings, 
and hail and tempests, and that this took place on the 
second day of creating the earth, the sun, the moon, 
and stars, when tlie ''firmaments were divided." 

The ancient Hebrews, as well as the early Christians, 
regarded the gods of the heathen as the devils that had 
been driven from Heaven, and who still aspired to be- 
come gods. St. Paul says, ''The Gentiles sacrifice to dev- 
ils'' (First Corinthians, x, 20). We are told that Satan, 
craving worship, showed Jesus the earth and all it con- 
tains, and said, "All these will I give thee, if thou wilt 
fall down and worship me." 

That all these traditions, coming down from remote 
antiquity, spring from the same oriental source is evi- 
denced by the similarity of many Persian and Hindoo, 
and even Chinese, legends. Asia, the cradle of the race, 
is the cradle of most of the gods. 

One Hindoo story is as follows : 

The chief of the fallen angels is Mahisasura, or the 
Great Asur. He and his angels were once holy, but, 
before the creation of the world, they rebelled against 
Brahma, whereupon, with the assistance of Schiva, 
Brahma cast them into the abyss of Onderah (the Hin- 
doo Hell). 

The Hindoos also represent Mahisasura — the Devil — 
as a great serpent, called Vrita. 

The Persian story of the fallen angels is that Ahriman, 
Prince of Devils, is not by nature evil; that if he had his 
own way he would be a pretty good sort of fellow; and 



46 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

tliat he has simply gone to the bad on account of his 
ambition and unsuccessful attempt to overcome the Etern- 
al One, and occupy the throne of Heaven himself. The 
sacred books of the Parsees assert that Ahriman will at 
last acknowledge his defeat and become loyal and obe- 
dient to the King of Heaven, and regain his former place. 

The Norse mythology says that Loki, the Spirit of 
Evil, was one of the gods, and ate and drank with them 
at their celestial feasts in Valhalla, till one day he arose 
in rebellion, and was overcome, and he and his progeny, 
the w^olf and the serpent, were cast out. Loki was chained 
under the mountains, and when he tosses and tumbles in 
helpless rage the earth quakes.. 

Maximus of Tyre, and ApoUonius of Rhodes, tell of 
the war of the gods against the angels who rebelled under 
Ophion, who was called the Serpent ; and the poet Phere- 
cydes sang of the event, and described it as twO' celestial 
armies fighting face to face; one being commanded by 
Saturn, and the other by Ophion. 

The legend of the Titans is linked with this. These, 
according to the Greek mythology, were twelve children, 
six sons and six daughters, whose father was Uranus 
(Pleaven), and whose mother was Ge (Earth), and who 
rebelled against their father and deposed him, and placed 
Kronos, one of their number, on the heavenly throne. 
Finally they were defeated by Zeus (or Jupiter, as the 
Latins named him), and were thrown into Tartarus 
(Hell). 

The Battas of Sumatra have this legend : Batara Guru, 
the supreme God, who had a daughter, called Putiarla 



LIFE-OF JEHOVAH .47 

Buran, who was the mother of the human race, made war 
against the Serpent (Devil), and cast the mountain Bak- 
kara out of Heaven upon his head, from under which he 
has never been able to make his escape. Batara Guru 
had a son named Layanga-layaad-mandi whom he placed 
on top of the mountain. Whenever the Devil turns and 
twists in agony, causing the earth to quake, his hands and 
feet protrude from the side of the mountain. Then Lay- 
anga-layaad-mandi hastens down the slopes and binds or 
holds the Devil's hands and feet, else he might shake the 
earth to pieces. 

The Devil has always been represented as limping on 
one foot. This, says tradition, was caused by his having 
broken his leg, when he struck the earth in his fall. 

Both the Greek and Norse mythologies also bear testi- 
mony to Satan's lame leg, although they account for it 
in a different manner. Hephaestus (the Devil), who pur- 
sued Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, and attempted to 
ravish her, was seized by the other gods and thrown 
bodily from Heaven. He fell into Lemnos, the fire-island, 
and was lamed by his fall. 

The Norse god Loki, the Evil Deity, lusted aftei 
Freya, the goddess of music and flowers; and in a fight 
with her protectors was lamed. 

According to the Mussulman story, Adam's soul had 
been created a thousand years before Adam was made; 
and all this while it had been steeped in a sea of light 
which flowed from Jehovah. 

Finally Jehovah ordered the soul to enterAdam 's body. 
This, the soul did not want to do; it evidently preferred 



48 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

lounging in the sea of light. Whereupon Jehovah became 
angry, and exclaimed : ''Quicken Adam against your will, 
and, as a penalty for your disobedience, you shall leave 
the body sorely against your will." 

Then Jehovah picked up the soul and blew it against 
Adam's body with such force that it entered his nose, and 
ran up into his head, and when it reached his eyes Adam 
opened them, and saw Jehovah's throne with this inscrip- 
tion written on it : '"There is no God but God, and Mo- 
hammed is His Prophet." Then the soul ran into Adam's 
ears, and he heard the angels singing; and soon it filled 
his whole body, and Adam was complete. 

When he stood up he was so tall that he faced the 
throne of Jehovah, and the light blazing therefrom nearly 
blinded him; then Jehovah pressed Adam down to a 
smaller size. 

One day Adam preached a sermon to the angels, who 
assembled before him in ten thousand ranks. The angels 
were amazed at his knowledge. He called all the animals 
of earth by their names, in seventy languages. Jehovah 
was so pleased with this sermon that he sent Adam a 
bunch of grapes, that grew in Paradise; The angel Gab- 
riel brought the grapes. 

According to another tradition Adam's soul was not 
blown by Jehovah into Adam's nose. A geintler method 
was used to do the work. When, commanded by Jehovah, 
it showed such a strong dislike to being confined in a body 
of clay, the angel Gabriel took a flute and, seating him- 
self beside the head of the lifeless Adam, played such rap- 
turous melodies that the soul came near to listen, and. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 49 

seeking a restful spot, entered into one of Adam's feet. 
Jehovah immediately seized the foot and shoved the soul 
on up into Adam's body, from which it could not escape. 

A Talmudic account of Adam's creation, which, says 
the Book of Genesis, was accomplished in a day, shows 
what a fast worker Jehovah is when he undertakes a job. 
It runs as follows : 

At the first hour, Jehovah gathered his dust; in the 
second, he formed the embryo; in the third, the limbs 
were made; in the fourth, the soul entered the body; at 
the fifth hour Adam stood up, and viewed the earth; at 
the sixth Jehovah drove all the animals before him, and 
Adam called each one by its right name; then said Jeho- 
vah, "And what is my name?" "Jehovah," answered 
Adam without hesitation. 

His education was complete. 

At the seventh hour, Adam married Eve; at the eighth, 
Cain and his twin sister were born ; at the ninth, Jehovah 
forbade them to eat of the forbidden apple tree; at the 
tenth, Satan wandered along and caused the Fall; at the 
eleventh, Adam and his family were driven from Eden; 
and at the twelfth, Adam was working for a living, and 
the sweat was pouring from his brow. 

The apocryphal book of Little Genesis tells a different 
story. It says that Adam did not fall until the seventh 
year of his existence, and that he was given forty-five 
days to gather his belongings together and move. It 
also says, that before the Fall, Adam and all the animals 
conversed with each other; but in the Fall the animals 
lost the power of speech. 



50 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

The ancient Rabbinical account agrees with the Mus- 
sulman as regards Adam's stature. The rabbis say that 
Adam was so tall that his head touched the sky ; and the 
Tree of Life, that stood in the center of Eden, had a 
trunk so large that it took a fast walker five years to 
travel around it, and that Adam's body was proportioned 
according to the size of the tree. The angels warned 
Jehovah that so huge a creature was liable to make trou- 
ble, so Jehovah put his hand on Adam's head and reduced 
his height to a thousand cubits. 

To the question, "How big was Adam?" the Talmud 
replies, "He was made so tall that he stood with his head 
in Heaven, till Jehovah pressed him do\vn at the Fall." 

Rabbi Jehuda says that when Adam lay stretched out 
he covered the whole earth. The book Sepher Gilgulim 
states that when he was made his head and throat were 
in Paradise, and his body on earth. This book also claims 
that he was so long that he reached from one end of the 
earth to the other, and, it further declares, it takes a man 
five hundred years to walk that distance ; and when Adam 
was created all the beasts of earth came and worshiped 
him, and wanted him to be their king. But Adam told 
them of the God Jehovah, who had made them all out 
of nothing; and so the beasts, and fowls, and fishes, all 
agreed to acknowledge Jehovah as their king. Then, says 
the book quoted, the sun, upon discovering Adam, was 
filled with fear, and became dark: and the angels were 
also frightened and begged Jehovah to remove the crea- 
ture out of their sight. Then Jehovah caused Adam to 
fall into a deep sleep and the sun and the angels, seeing 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 51 

him lying there helpless, took courage, and finally ceased 
lo fear him. 

The book Sepher Chasidim tells it in this manner: 
When tlie angels saw what a big creature Adam was, with 
his face shining brighter than the sun itself, they bowed 
down before him and cried "Holy, holy, holy!" There- 
upon Jehovah put Adam to sleep; and then he proceeded 
to cut off pieces of flesh from all parts of Adam's body, 
until he had reduced him to what he considered a proper 
size. When Adam awoke and saw all these chunks of 
flesh scattered around him, he cried, ''O, Jehovah, why 
hast thou robbed me of my person?'' Then Jehovah said : 
'Take these parts that I have cut off of thee, and carry 
them all over the earth, and drop them in every land; 
and vv^herever you drop them, there will your posterity 
dwell." 

In all the races of the world are found traditions of 
the origin of man, none of which, it may be noted, agree 
with modern science and the theory of evolution. Some 
say he was created of water (from which the modern 
scientists say he did originate), and some claim he was 
made of earth. It seems rather natural that primitive 
man, looking upon the universe, should select these sub- 
stances as his origin. 

The Peruvians teach that the earth was originally 
peopled by four men and four women, who emerged from 
a cave near the city of Cuzco. 

Among the North American Indians is found this sim- 
ple belief : The earth, they say, is our universal mother, 
in whose womb man was created. The first beings crept 



52 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

to the earth's surface by chmbing up the roots of trees 
which hung from the entrance to nature's womb. Others 
say tliat the Great Spirit, as soon as these beings were 
matured, sent a deer, upon whose back they mounted, 
and were brought to dayhght. And still other Indian 
traditions claim that the first man and woman tore their 
way out to the surface of the earth with their nails 
(Atheme Jones, ''North American Indian Traditions;'' 
Heckewelder's ''Indian Nations"). 

The Egyptian sacred writers claim that man was made 
of mud, taken from the river Nile. 

The Chinese book Fong-zen-tong says: "When the 
earth and Heaven were made, there was not as yet man 
or peoples. Then the god Nin-hoa moulded yellow earth, 
and of that made man." 

Some of the old rabbis claim that Jehovah created 
Adam double — that is, he was both man and woman. 
They say that Adam and Eve were formed back to back, 
and that their separation was brought about by Jehovah's 
hewing them asunder with a hatchet. 

Other rabbis say that when Jehovah concluded to pro- 
vide a mate for Adam, that he simply drew a woman 
out of his side. It appears that Jehovah studied for some 
time as from what part of Adam's anatomy he should 
extract the woman ; for, say the rabbis, he would not ex- 
tract her from Adam's head lest she should be vain, 
nor from his mouth, lest she should be given to gossip; 
nor from his ears, lest she should be an eavesdropper; 
nor from his hands, lest she should prove meddlesome; 
nor from his feet, lest she should be a gadabout; nor 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 53 

from his heart, lest she should be jealous; so finally 
Jehovah drew her from his side. 

But alas! declare the rabbis, notwithstanding all these 
precautions, the woman exhibited every fault that Jeho- 
vah tried to guard against. 

The rabbis say that Jehovah prepared a sumptuous 
wedding feast for Adam and Eve, the table for which 
was made of all manner of precious stones, and that 
each stone was a hundred ells in length and sixty ells 
wide, and that the dishes were of sohd gola, 

Jehovah himself doubtless sat at the head of the table, 
and gave the blushing bride, adorned in a fresh picked 
fig leaf, to the groom who was dressed in the same attire. 
Angels were seated along the sides of the immense table, 
which was loaded with food and wine brought from 
Paradise. 

The Mussulman story of Eve's creation is that after 
Adam had eaten the bunch of grapes that Jehovah sent 
him for preaching so eloquent a sermon to the angels, 
that he laid down and took a nap; and while asleep Jeho- 
vah came to him and drew the woman from his left side. 
The woman Jehovah named Hava, because she was taken 
from one living (Haii), and he placed her by Adam's 
side. She was the perfect picture of Adam, say the 
Mussulman writers. It would seem natural that she 
should take after her only parent. Only her features, 
we are told, were more delicate than Adam's, her hair, 
which was divided into seven hundred locks, was longer, 
her form more slender and charming, her eyes softer. 



54 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

and her voice more musical than that of the man that 
bore her. 

VVliile all tliis was taking place, Adam, in his deep 
sleep, and his stomach full of grape juice, was dreaming 
that he had a wife; and great was his delight, upon 
awakening, to find his dream materialized and lying by 
his side. He reached forth to take her dainty hand in 
his, and made an immediate offer of marriage; but Hava 
modestly withdrew her hand, and said, ''Jehovah is my 
master, and i cannot give my hand to thee without his 
permission; and, moreover, it is not proper for a man 
to take a wife without making her a wedding present." 

For the first bride on earth Hava appears to have been 
quite well posted. 

Then Adam hunted up the angel Gabriel and had him 
go to Heaven to obtain Jehovah's permission to marry 
Hava. Gabriel returned with the message that if he 
would say twenty prayers for Mohammed, ^ho was to be 
born in due time, that Jehovah would let him take the 
young maiden as his wife. Adam, it is needless to state, 
got down on his knees at once and offered up the required 
amount of prayers. Then Ridhwan, the porter of Para- 
dise, brought to Adam the winged horse Meimun, and 
to Hava a light-footed she-camel; both animals being 
bred in Heaven. Gabriel assisted the happy couple to 
mount, and flew with them to Paradise, where they were 
greeted by tlie angels with shouts of ''Hail, father and 
mother of Mohammed!" On one of the golden boule- 
vards of Paradise had been erected in the midst of a 
beautiful garden a green silk tent, supported on golden 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 55 

pillars, to receive the bride and groom, inside of which 
was a throne of gold for them to sit on. After resting 
a bit angels took the pair to the river that flows through 
Paradise and gave them a bath; then they were escorted 
to Jehovah's throne, who bade them welcome to Paradise, 
and told them they could live there. 

"I have prepared you this garden for your home," said 
Jehovah ; "In it you shall be protected from cold and heat, 
from hunger and thirst. Enjoy all that meets your eye, 
only of one fruit taste not. Beware how you break my 
command, and arm yourself against the subtlety of your 
foe, Eblis (Satan) ; he envies you, and stands by you 
seeking to destroy you, for through you was he cast out." 

Thus the Mussulman story places the garden of Eden 
in Paradise. 

The people of Madagascar believe that the first man 
was made of dust, and was placed in a garden, wherein 
everything for his happiness was provided. He had no 
e\41 passions, neither did he require food or drink; more- 
over the Creator had forbidden him to partake of these 
things. One day the Devil came to him, and pictured 
the sweetness of the apple, the lusciousness of the date, 
and the delicious juice of the orange. All this made the 
man's mouth water; he felt himself, for the first time in 
his life, to be hungry; until at last his appetite so over- 
came him that he devoured all the fruits the Devil offered 
him, and washed the meal down with water from the 
fountain flowing in the g'arden. 

Nothing serious happened for several days; and then 
a pimple appeared on his leg. The pimple grew to a 



56 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

large-sized tumor, and caused the man considerable pain. 
At the end of six months the tumor burst, and out 
stepped a beautiful little girl. What to do with her the 
man didn't know. But an angel soon came from Heaven, 
and told him to let her run around the garden until she 
grew to womanhood, and then marry her. This the man 
did, and thus started the human race. 

Both Christian commentators, such as Eugubinus, and 
Jewish rabbis, have asserted that Adams was of both 
sexes. 

The Rabbi Jeremiah Ben Eleazer declares that the 
verse fotind in Psalms cxxxix, which reads "Thou hast 
fashioned me behind and before,*' proves this, and that 
Jehovah made Adam with two faces, one male and one 
female, and a double body accordingly. At the proper 
time Jehovah as previously recorded split him in two. 

Some of the rabbis declare that "Adam had two faces 
and one tail, and from the beginning he was both male 
and female, male on one side, female on the other; and 
that the parts were separated ;" but the Talmudists claim 
that the only abnormal feature about Adam was that he 
had a tail, and that Jehovah cut it off and made Eve 
out of it. 

With all these conflicting stories the theologians have 
surely had a hard time sifting out the true faith. 

In the speech of Aristophanes, contained in the Svm- 
po«ium of Plato, an ancient legend is given, that says 
that in the beginning the earth was peopled by a race of 
beings called Androgynes, who had two heads, four arms 
and four legs, and two bodies, one male and one female. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 57 

They were powerful and proud, and finally attempted to 
build such high structures as would enable them to make 
their way to Heaven. The gods, determined to thwart 
their plans, but not wishing to destroy the race, asked 
Jupiter what they should do; Jupiter told them to go to 
earth and with a sword divide every creature into two 
parts. This they did, and thus began the human race. 

The Hindoos have a legend that says the god Brahma, 
to whom was appointed the task of producing mankind, 
felt himself having violent pains; and at last both sides 
of his body burst open and from one side came a boy, 
and from the other a girl. They were taken to the is- 
land of Ceylon, where they grew up and married. 

The Chinese have a legend that the goddess Amida 
started the race by sweating a number of male children 
out of her right arm-pit and an equal number of female 
children from her left arm-pit. 

It seems strange to those who believe the Bible that 
anybody can accept such a silly story as this. 

The story of Aaron's magic rod, as found in the Book 
of Exodus, is told in another chapter; but the original 
history of the rod has been left out of the Bible. The 
Rabbi Levi and other Jewish writers, as narrated in 
the works of Eisenmenger, record the ancient account re- 
garding the origin of the rod. At the close of the seventh 
day, or Sabbath, immediately following the creation, after 
Jehovah had rested somewhat from his labors, he cut 
this rod from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and 
Evil, to use as a staff while walking about the earth and 
looking over the work he had done the past week. Then, 



58 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

after Jehovah had made Adam, he gave him the rod to 
keep. When Adam died he left the rod to Enoch, and 
Enoch gave it to Noah, and Noah gave it to Shem, 
and Shem gave it to Abraham, and Abraham gave it to 
Isaac, and Isaac gave it to Jacob, v^ho brought it to Egypt 
with him, and turned it over to his son Joseph. By this 
time the tnte origin of the rod had become forgotten, and 
Joseph thought it v^as nothing but an ordinary walking 
stick handed down from the days of his great-grand- 
father. 

But Jethro, who was a mighty magician, came across 
it and discovered in the odd characters carven on the rod 
the mystic words of the God Jehovah himself. So he 
carefully preserved the rod until Moses appeared, and, 
perceiving by the power of his magic that Moses would 
need it, he gave it to him; and Moses in turn gave it to 
his brother Aaron. 

It is therefore no wonder that Moses and Aaron could 
perform all manner of magic in the land of Egypt. 

According to the Mussulman story Adam grew no 
whiskers until after the Fall. When his beard appeared 
on his face Adam was so mortified that he wept bitterly. 
He felt that his good looks were gone forever. Then 
Jehovah told him why it was he had concluded to have 
whiskers grow on men's faces, but not on women's. "The 
beard," said Jehovah, "is man's ornament on earth; it 
distinguishes him from feeble woman." 

Jehovah's dislike of women is so intense that it is a 
wonder how he ever consented to have a son by one of 
them. The only reason he did, according to the divinely 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 59 

inspired New Testament, was that there was no other 
way to raise a god with a body of flesh and blood, to be 
offered to himself in sacrifice. 

Another Mussulman tradition says tliat when Adam 
fell out of Paradise (some of the ancients believed that 
he and Eve actually came tumbling down through the 
air) that he landed on the mountains in the island of 
Ceylon (being so large he naturally covered the whole 
range) . There he remained, stupefied by his fearful fall, 
for a hundred years. Where Eve was all this time is not 
mentioned. When, at last, Adam came out of his stupor, 
he left his garment of fig leaves, made in Heaven, on what 
is known as Adam's Peak, in Ceylon. These leaves finally 
dried to dust, and the dust was scattered all over Ceylon, 
causing the fragrant spices and plants to spring up for 
which the place is famed. 

The divinely inspired Book of Genesis declares that 
Jehovah drowned everybody on earth, save Noah and his 
family, in the flood. But the Rabbi Ehezer, who was also 
divinely inspired, has left us an account of the flood in 
which it is stated that Jehovah failed to exterminate all 
the wicked giants — the progeny of the angels and the 
daughters of men — and that a few escaped. 

Other ancient rabbis tell the same story. 

Rabbi Eliezer says that the giants sprang from the 
union of angels with the daughters of Cain, who, he de- 
clares, exposed their charms to the heavenly admirers by 
going about in immodest clothing. When Jehovah per- 
ceived that these angels were smitten with the enticing 
damsels he gave the angels bodies of flesh and blood. 



60 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Jehovah was doubtless curious at first to know what 
sort of a breed the cross would produce. But the off- 
spring turned out to be a bad lot. They grew so big 
that they were a terror to ordinary hunians; they also 
had ugly dispositions. 

The manner in which the great giant Og escaped 
drowning is told in the Talmud. The story is that when 
Noah was leading a rhinoceros to the ark, that Og 
climbed on the animal's back and Noah was unable to 
dislodge him. The rhinoceroses, say the rabbis, were such 
huge beasts that the ark could not contain them; so 
Jehovah had Noah put a halter on the pair selected to be 
saved, and they went through the flood with their heads 
inside the ark, and their bodies swimming outside. 
Thus, on the back of the monster, Og rode in safety. 

To give an idea of the size of an ordinary rhinoceros 
of that period, the Rabbi Jannai says that he once saw a 
baby rhinoceros on the banks of the Jordan only a day 
old, and that it was as big as Mount Tabor, the dimen- 
sions of which are forty miles. The neck of this infant, 
declares the rabbi, was three miles long, and its head 
half a mile. While he was gazing at the animal it drop- 
ped dung, and it choked up the River Jordan. 

Other Jewish commentators, unable to explain what 
sort Oif a miracle it would require to have a hole in the 
ark large enough tO' take in the head oi a rhinoceros, 
say that only the tip of the nose went in. 

Some of the giants were so tall that the water, which, 
we are told, covered the highest mountains of earth, only 
came up to their waists. Jehovah cooked a large number 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH ,61 

of these by causing the water surrounding them to be- 
come boihng hot, so that the flesh fell off their legs and 
the lower parts of their bodies. Others were so big and 
powerful that they covered the ''windows of heaven'' 
with their hands, so that Jehovah wasn't able to rain a 
drop in their neighborhood. 

Thus did some of the giants escape the flood. 

''And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on 
the face of the earth, and daughters were horn unto 
them, that the sons of God (^angels) saw the daughters 
of men were fair; and they took them wives of all which 
they chose. * * * There were giants in the earth in 
those days; * * * when the sons of God came in 
unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to 
them, the same became mighty men which were of old," 

This bare mention of the origin of these angelic half- 
breeds that are said to have once dwelt on earth is found 
in the Bible in its present form (Genesis, chapter vi). 
Other sacred writings are more explicit regarding these 
enormous creatures. The apocryphal Book of Enoch 
contains an interesting account of them. Why the theo- 
logians left this book out of the Bible is a mystery. It 
was accepted as divinely inspired by the early Christian 
Church, and, as Enoch wrote the book after he had left 
the earth and moved to Heaven, it would appear to be 
even more inspired than any other of the sacred scriptures. 
St. Jude, in the fourteenth verse of his epistle found in 
the New Testament refers to the Book of Enoch, and 
among the early Fathers such saints as Origen, Augus- 
tine, Clement of Alexandria, and several others recog- 



62 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

nized it as inspired by Jehovah. Rabbinical writers as 
late as the thirteenth century also refer to it. 

We are told that Jehovah took such a fancy to Enocli 
that he made him one of his chief angels. This is re- 
corded in the Commentary on the Five Books of Moses, 
by Rabbi Menachem, as well as in other ancient writings. 
The name that Jehovah gave to Enoch, when he made 
an angel of him, was Metatron. He used to fly down 
to earth and talk to his old friends quite often. He must 
have created a sensation wandering around the old home- 
stead, for he had grown to be the most monstrous of 
all the giants ever told of. The Rabbi Islimael, to whom 
the angel Metatron — formerly Mr. Enoch — ^paid frequent 
visits, thus describes him: He (Enoch) was carried to 
Heaven in a chariot of fire by horses of fire; and when 
he entered intO' the presence of Jehovah, all the Sacred 
Beasts of Paradise (a description of some of which is 
found in Ezekiel, and also in the Book of Revelation), 
and all the holy angels recoiled five thousand three hun- 
dred and eighty miles at the smell of him, and cried aloud 
to Jehovah, ''What a stink is come among us from one 
born of woman! Why is one who has fed on earthly 
food admitted into Heaven!'' 

It will be recalled, also, that Enoch had no time to 
take a bath or change his clothing when the chariot of 
flame came after him; doubtless therefore he did smell 
some. 

Then, we are told, Jehovah called the Sacred Beasts 
and holy angels back, and told them not to worry, that 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 63 

he proposed to fumigate Enoch, and then make him the 
biggest angel in Heaven. 

And he did. The Rabbi Ishmael says that Enoch all 
at once expanded to such a size that it would take a man 
five hundred years to walk from his heel to the crown of 
his head. He gives his exact measure, as received from 
Enoch's own lips. He measured the same in thickness 
that he did in height. He was, declares Rabbi Ishmael, 
"seven hundred thousand times thousand miles in length 
and in breadth." 

In figures this reads 700,000,000. 

A man that could walk that distance in five hundred 
years could beat a modern telegram. 

It was Enoch, says the authority quoted, that held 
the ladder upon which angels ascended and descended, 
as seen by Jacob in his sleep. 

All the angels of Jehovah, who were the fathers of the 
giants, were big fellows, but thei'e was none of them like 
unto Enoch. 

Some of the stories told of the giants are so won- 
derful that it is strange they have not been preserved as 
part of the Christian faith. Their biographies are to be 
found among the Mussulmans and Oriental Christians. 
We are told it was a giant, named Gian ben Gian, that 
erected the pyramids of Egypt. 

If the theologians had knoAvn of the great Chinese wall 
they might have claimed that it also was the single- 
handed work of Gian ben Gian. 

Some of these giants had numerous arms and legs, and 
some possessed several heads. Jehovah provided animals 



64 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

of like build upon which they rode. The giant Semen- 
doun — whose father was an angel and his mother a 
good looking young Jewish girl — ^had an hundred arms. 
It was all his mother could do to handle him when a 
child. This giant married and had a sort named Hus- 
chenk, who killed a giant with three heads, mounted on 
an animal w^ith twelve legs. Jehovah created this species 
of animals — called Rakhsche — by crossing- a crocodile 
with an hippopotamus. They fed on the flesh of snakes. 
It appears that some of the Jewish girls married to the 
angels gave birth to freaks, for we are told of a race 
called Mahisers, that had fishes' heads — like sharks. They 
were creatures of great ferocity. The giant Huschenk, 
having killed the giant with the three heads, and then 
having mounted the twelve-legged charger, went after 
the Mahisers and killed the whole tribe. 

Among other strange creatures at this time, as told by 
"the Mussulmans, was an immense bird called the Simorg. 
This bird w^as a particular friend of Jehovah's, and ver}^ 
religious. It spoke all languages. 



CHAPTER IV. 

T N THE writings of Eutychius, Patriarch of Alexan- 
^ dria, who Hved in the tenth century, quotations are 
found from scriptural documents that are now lost con- 
cerning Noah and the flood. 

With all his magic it appears that Jehovah has been 
unable to preserve some of his divinely inspired records. 

Eutychius declares that Noah, when building the ark, 
made a bell of plane wood, about five feet high, which 
he sounded three times a day, at morning, noon, and 
evening, to warn the people that Jehovah was going to 
drown them. 

''Before they entered the ark," says this holy father, 
'*Noah and his sons v/ent to the cave of Elcanuz, where 
lay the bodies of Adam, Seth, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, 
Methuselah, and Lamech. He kissed his dead ancestors, 
and bore off the body of Adam, together with precious 
oblations. Shem bore gold; Ham took myrrh; and 
Japheth incense. Having gone forth, as they descended 
the Holy Mount they lifted their eyes to Paradise, which 
crowned it, and said, with tears, 'Farewell! Holy Para- 
dise, Farewell!' and they kissed the stones and embraced 
the trees of the Holy Mount" (Selden edition of Euty- 
chius, Patriarcha Alexandria, vol. i, page 36). 

Ibn Abbas, the Mussulman commentator, records that 
Noah, knowing nothing about shipbuilding, asked Jeho- 
vah what w^ould be the proper shape of the ark, and also 



66 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

what sort of wood to use. Jehovah told him to build 
the boat on the plan of a bird's belly, and tO' use teak 
wood. Jehovah had Noah plant a special teak tree for 
the work, which grew in twenty years to such a size that 
it furnished all the timber required (Chronicle of Tabari, 
page io8). 

A great deal of confusion regarding the divinely in- 
spired records has been caused, not only through losing 
many of the original revelations from Jehovah, but also 
by leaving out of the Bible apocryphal books still in ex- 
istence. For instance, the account in Genesis (chapter iv, 
verse 15) says that Jehovah put a mark on Cain so that 
everybody would recognize him. The Book of Jasher 
tells us what the mark was — it was a horn, that grew 
out of Cain's forehead. We are further told that 
Lamech, who was well along in years before he became 
the father of any children, was blind in his old age. One 
day he was wandering through the woods, led by his 
boy Tubal-cain, when who should appear in the distance 
but Cain. When Tubal-cain saw Cain, with the horn 
sticking out of his forehead, he thought it was some wild 
animal, and became frightened, and cried to his father, 
who carried a bow and arrow, ''Span thy bow^ and shoot!" 
This the old man did; and bhnd as he was he hit the 
mark and Cain fell dead. 

The ancient rabbis are unanimous in supporting this 
account. It explains the words found in Genesis iv, verses 
23 and 24 : "And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and 
Tillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, harken unto 
my speech : for I have slain a man to my wounding, and 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 67 

a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sev- 
enfold, truly Lamech seventy-fold/' 

In the fifteenth verse of the chapter in Genesis quoted 
it says that Jehovah told Cain that if anybody should kill 
him vengeance would ''be taken on him seven-fold." 

Now when Lamech discovered he had killed Cain, who 
was, according to the record found in this same chapter 
of Genesis, his own great-great-great-great-great-grand- 
father, he smote his hands together so violently that he 
hit his own son Tubal-cain and killed him. This so en- 
raged his wives that they plotted vengeance on him. But 
Lamech told them that if Cain should be avenged seven- 
fold, Lamech would be avenged seventy-fold. So the 
two women, Adah and Tillah, concluded it was best not 
to molest their husband. 

The Book of Jasher says that in those days the young 
men did not want their wives to bear children, and the 
way they kept them sterile was by giving them large 
quantities of strong drink. Tillah, we are told, carried 
a steady jag until she became an old woman. Then she 
sobered up and gave birth to Tubal-cain and Naamah, 

The Chronicle of Tabari says that Satan rode inside 
the ark during the forty days of the flood. The way 
he got in is as follows : 

When Noah was herding the animals into the ark — 
one male and one female of each variety — the Devil 
caught hold of the jackass's tail, causing the creature to 
move along slowly. This made Noah impatient, and he 
shouted, "You cursed one, come in quick,'' meaning the 



68 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

ass. When Noah discovered the Devil still clinging to 
the animal's tail, inside the ark, he said, **What right 
have you in here?'' 

"I have entered at your invitation," replied the Devil. 
"You said, 'Cursed one, come in' ; I am the accursed one." 

Doubtless Jehovah himself laughed at the joke. 

The Chronicle of Tabari further gives this interesting 
information in natural history, which is another strong 
theological refutation of the theory of evolution: 

"There left the ark two sorts of animals which had 
not entered it — the pig and the cat. These animals did 
not exist before the Deluge, and Jehovah created them in 
the ark because it became vile with animal and human 
filth, which caused a terrible stench. The persons in the 
ark, not being able to endure any longer the smell, com- 
plained to Noah. Then Noah passed his hand down the 
back of the elephant, and it evacuated a pair of pigs. 
The pigs ate all the filth which was in the ark, and the 
stench was no more." 

The story of the creation of the cat follows. It seems 
that Jehovah, during the six days in which he made the 
universe out of nothing, created rats, but overlooked mak- 
ing any cats. So it happened that the pair of rats that 
Noah brought into the ark became a great nuisance. 

"They ate the food, and befouled what they did not 
eat." 

They bred so fast that the ark was overrun w^ith them. 
"Then," says the Chronicle of Tabari, "the voyagers went 
to Noah, and said to him, You delivered us in our for- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH .69 

mer trouble, but now we are plagued with rats, which 
gnaw our garments, eat our victuals, and cover every- 
thing with their filth. Then Noah passed his hand down 
the back of the lion, who sneezed, and a pair of cats 
leaped out of his nostrils. And the cats ate the rats." 

It is to be hoped that the professors in the theological 
seminaries will read this narrative of the origin of the 
pigs and cats and teach it to the divinity students. 

The Mussulman account of the planting of the vine- 
yard from the juice of which Noah got drunk is some- 
what different from the Genesis account; it says that 
Ham, and not his father, planted it. If this is true, Ham 
himself was the original cause of the curse Jehovah put 
upon him. 

The account reads: 

''When Ham had planted the vine, Satan watered it 
with the blood of a peacock; when it thrust forth leaves, 
he sprinkled it with the blood of an ape ; when it formed 
grapes, he drenched it with the blood of a lion ; when the 
grapes were ripe, he watered it with the blood of a swine. 
The vine, watered by the blood of these four animals, 
has assumed these characters. The first glass of wine 
m.akes a man animated, his vivacity great, his color is' 
heightened. In this condition he is like the peacock. 
When the fumes of tlie liquor rise into his head, he is 
gay, and he leaps and gambols Hke an ape. When drunk- 
enness takes possession of him, he is like a furious lion 
When it is at its height he is like the sw4ne ; he falls and 
grovels on the ground, stretches himself out, and goes to 



70 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

sleep'' (Colin de Plancy, Leg^ides de T Ancient Testa 
ment, page 121). 

Noah drank a swine's worth of the stuff; the result of 
which, by command of the God Jehovah, Ham and his 
descendants became negroes; black slavery became a 
divinely ordained institution; a civil war took place in 
America several thousand years later; and lynchings of 
blacks is still a popular amusement. 

The Chronicle of Tabari declares that Ham, for hav- 
ing laughed at his drunken and naked father, became 
black, and that the grapes he planted became purple. 
Originally all grapes were white. 

One story is that Noah had a nurse, who, in the sight 
of Jehovah, was one of the most important personages 
in sacred history. Her name was Sambethe, and she was 
the first of the Sibyls, or female fortune-tellers. 

Ham, even though he was cursed and made black, 
lived quite an eventful life after the flood. He was the 
only person living possessing the knowledge of magic. 
Prior to the flood there was a set of books on magic spe- 
cially gotten up by Jehovah for the use of his magicians, 
which were in Ham's custody. Just before it started lo 
rain, for safe keeping, Ham buried these books; and when 
the flood was over he exhumed them. With the knowl- 
edge contained in these books Ham could not only per- 
form wonders, in spite of Jehovah's curse, but, it is stated, 
he even improved on the magic found in the books, and 
composed new magic of his own. Cerco d'Ascoli, in his 
''Commentary on the Sphere of Sacrabosco," says that he 
had personally seen one of the books on magic composed 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 71 

by Ham, "which contained the elements and practice of 
necromancy." 

Books on alchemy and conjuration of spirits existed 
among the Christians in the middle ages, which were 
claimed to have been written by Ham. They were ac- 
cepted as divinely inspired. It seems a shame, when we 
realize how much of Jehovah's original religion has been 
lost or repudiated. 

One of Jehovah's noted magicians was a descendant 
of Shem, named Saleh (or Salah). He doubtless pos- 
sessed some of Ham's works on magic. Bare mention of 
his birth, found in Genesis, x, verse 24, and that he was 
an ancestor of Jesus' on his foster-father Joseph's side, as 
narrated in Luke iii, verse 35, is all that the Bible, in its 
present form, says of him. But his memory and deeds 
have, at least partly, been preserved in the Koran and 
other writings. 

The Mussulmans claim that Saleh was chosen by Je- 
hovah to convert the Thamudites. The Thamudites were 
cavemen, and dwelt among the rocks. 

Now Saleh, though his parents were orthodox follow- 
ers of Jehovah, was born among the Thamudites, and the 
people tried to turn him to their religion ; but Saleh could 
not be turned. When he was a young man the Thamu- 
dites said, ''He is young and inexperienced; when he is 
old, and grown wiser, he will adore our gods." But Saleh 
only preached Jehovah all the harder. 

Finally, seeing that the Thamudites were determined to 
remain heathen, Jehovah lost all patience and told Saleh 
to go the limit — to tell the Thamudites that they must 



72 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

either worship the God of Israel, or be exterminated. So 
Saleh issued a bull, in the name of Jehovah, to this ef- 
fect.- 

But the Thamudites replied, *What miracle can you 
work, to prove that your mission is from Jehovah?" 

Then said Saleh, *'0h, my people, a she-camel that 
shall come from Jehovah shall be to you for a sign. Let 
her go and eat on the earth, and do her no injury, that 
a terrible retribution fall not upon you.'' (Koran, Book 
of Sura.) 

It seems that Saleh had asked what sort of a miracle 
they wanted to prove that Jehovah was a great god, and 
they had replied, "Bring out of a rock a camel with red 
hair, and a colt of a camel also with red hair; let them 
eat grass, and we will believe." 

"That's easy," said Saleh, who evidently knew that Je- 
hovah had droves of red-haired camels in Paradise; so 
he hunted a good sized rock and got down on his knees 
and prayed; and sure enough, in the presence of the as- 
sembled Thamudites, the rock groaned in pain, split 
asunder, and out stepped a red-haired camel with her 
red-haired foal, and they both began to eat grass. 

Still the heathen Thamudites would not worship Jeho- 
vah. Then the camel went to the spring of living water 
that had for generations quenched the thirst of the people, 
and she drank it dry. 

In a day or tv/o the Thamudites went to Saleh and 
said: 

"We must have water!" 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 73 

Saleh replied, "The fountain shall flow one day for 
you, and one day for the camel." 

So Jehovah put a spell on the spring, and it flowed 
according to Saleh's order. 

One day the red-haired camel and her colt would get 
there early, and drink the spring dry; and it did not 
flow again till the next day, when the camel would stay 
away, and let the people drink. 

But this arrangement was far from satisfactory to the 
natives. They wanted to drink every day, and not every 
other day, and, besides, the women often had some wash- 
ing to do; so they soon began to hate the red-haired 
camel and her red-haired colt, and planned among 
themselves how to get rid of them. But Saleh 
threatened the people with dire calamity the day 
they harmed the camel, and the people, having 
witnessed Saleh's magic, were afraid of the threat. Then 
Jehovah came to Saleh and told him that a child would 
be born who would kill the camel. 

"The slayer,'" said Jehovah, "will be a child with red 
hair and blue eyes.'" 

This news Saleh told to the Thamudites, v/ho immedi- 
ately made investigation and found that ten women of 
their tribe would soon become mothers. Therefore they 
chose ten midwives to attend the ten women, with instruc- 
tions to choke to death every red-headed youngster that 
appeared. 

Now Jehovah had put a charm on these expectant 
mothers, so that every one of them gave birth to a red- 
headed, blue-eyed baby boy. The nurses got away with 



74 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

nine of them all right, but the mother of the tenth, who 
was a wife of a chief of the tribe, saved hers. The way 
it happened is thus told : 

The parents of the nine children that were killed at 
birth conceived a deadly hatred against Saleh, whom they 
declared was in league with the Devil, and that his magic 
power would be destroyed if they could slay him. They 
therefore determined to defy him; and when the time 
was come for the chief's wife to be delivered, the nine 
fathers of the nine dead babies assembled at the home of 
the chief and dragged the midwife off the premises the 
minute the child was born, which proved, like the others, 
to be a red-headed boy. So the child lived, and when he 
was eleven years old he became, we are told, * 'great and 
handsome/' 

This encouraged the fathers of the nine slaughtered 
babies to still further endeavor to carry out their designs 
against Saleh. They said: 

"We will kill him outside the city, and returning, say 
we were elsewhere when he was killed." 

So they went and hid themselves under a rock, just 
outside the city limits, and at a spot where Saleh was 
accustomed to wander in prayerful meditation. But Je- 
hovah was on the track of the nine fathers of slaughtered 
babies, and no sooner were they seated in ambush under 
the projecting rock than he pushed it over on them and 
crushed them to death. The next day their corpses were 
discovered; and then the whole tribe of Thamudites be- 
came incensed. They said, 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 75 

^'Saleh has slain our children, and now he slays our 
men.'' 

However, fearing Saleh himself, they concluded to 
tackle the camel. This was the chance for the red-haired 
boy to fulfill Jehovah's prediction. He went to the foun- 
tain where the camel was drinking, and with one kick 
he tumbled her over, and with another kick killed her. 
Then the colt, seeing what happened to its mother, lit out 
at a lickety-split gait, with the red-headed boy after it. 
Then Saleh, who had witnessed the proceedings, let off 
a cry that was heard for miles — 

"The wrath of the God Jehovah is about to fall!" he 
yelled. 

Hearing this threat the whole population went in pur- 
suit of the colt and the boy; for Saleh said that if they 
brought the young camel back safe and sound, Jehovah 
might be induced to cool off to some extent. 

Off toward the rock from which it and its mother had 
sprung fled the young camel, with the red-headed boy 
close on its heels; and it reached the rock just as it heard 
the shouts of the multitude in hot pursuit; and turning 
around, and facing the whole outfit, the colt gave three 
piercing cries and vanished into the rock. 

The Thamudites came up and beat the rock, but it was 
no use. That young camel was safe in the arms of Je- 
hovah. i^F^ 

Then said Saleh, who had joined the crowd, "The 
wrath of Jehovah is now on the way; prepare to receive 
it. Tomorrow your faces will become livid, the next 
day black, and the day after fiery red." 



76 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

And the thing happened, just as Saleh said it would. 
The third day, with their faces hke burning coals, the 
voice of Jehovah himself sounded like the roar of a mil- 
lion lions, and the heathen fell dead; all save a fev/ con- 
verts that the holy man of God, Saleh, had made. 

The Chronicle of Tabari informs us that the young 
camel that escaped into the rock, together with the ass 
that Balaam rode, are now in Heaven. 

S. Baring-Gould, in his ''Legends of the Patriarchs,'' 
tells us that certain Arabian historians give a still more 
wonderful account of the birth and mission of Saleh. It 
runs as follows: Djundu Ibn Omar was King of the 
Thamudites, with an army of seventy thousand soldiers. 
He had a palace cut out of the face of a rock, and his 
heathen high-priest, named Kanuch Ibn Abid, had one 
constructed the same way. 

A great temple was built of rock, in which was an 
image of the Thamudite god. This image had the head 
of a man, the neck of a bull, the body of a lion, and the 
feet of a horse. 

(He somewhat resembled the animals seen by Jeho- 
vah's holy prophet, Ezekiel, an account of which appears 
in another chapter.) 

The image w^as made of gold, and decorated with pre- 
cious stones. One day as Kanuch, the high-priest, was 
saying his4)rayers in the temple to the gold idol with the 
head of a man and the neck of a bull and the feet of a 
horse, Jehovah, who had wandered in, put a spell upon 
him ; and when he came out of it he saw the image lying 
prostrate on the floor, with its crown fallen from its head. 



jLIFE OF JEHOVAH 77 

This so startled Kaniich that he fled to the king, who 
sent men to set up the image again and replace its crowru 

But Kanuch, who suspected that Jehovah was the cause 
of the image's downfall, began to lose faith in his heathen 
god and refused to pray in the temple. The king there- 
upon sent two of his officers to cut off Kanuch's head. 
But Jehovah struck the officers wath blindness just as they 
were about to execute Kanuch, and sent two angels, who 
transported him to a grotto filled with provisions and 
drink. 

The king diligently searched for the high-priest, but 
could not find him, and finally, giving him up for lost, 
appointed a kinsman, by the name of Davud, to be high- 
priest. But after performing his new duties for three 
days Davud came to the king and reported that the image 
had again tumbled down on the floor and dropped its 
crown. Then the king had the image set up once more. 

By this time the Devil had learned of the strange things 
being done in the temple, and hastened there and entered 
into the image of the heathen god, and, speaking through 
its mouth, exhorted everybody to beware of Jehovah, and 
to remain true to their heathen god. 

Encouraged at hearing this Davud ordered a sacrifice 
of two fat bulls to be offered to the image; but no sooner 
were the animals led to the altar than one of them, en- 
chanted by Jehovah, opened its mouth and cried : 

"Will you sacrifice us to a heathen god? O Jehovah, 
do thou destroy this heathen nation!" 

Then the bulls broke their halters and fled away. Men 



78 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

on horseback pursued them, but it was no use. Jehovah 
hid the bulls where they could not be found. 

Jehovah, before utterly annihilating the Thaniudites, 
concluded to give them one more cliance to renounce their 
own religion and become orthodox. 

Jehovah is a very merciful god. 

Now Kanuch's wife, whose name was Ragwah, had 
mourned continuously the disappearance of her husband. 
So Jehovah sent a bird from Paradise to conduct her to 
the cave where the angels had taken her husband. This 
bird was a raven, with a white head, a green back, purple 
feet, and a blue beak, and its eyes were made of spark- 
ling gems. The rest of the body was black. 

This species of crow is quite common in Heaven. 

It was midnight when the celestial bird entered Rag- 
wah's bedchamber, and the place was very dark; but the 
light from the raven's eyes lit up the room, and Ragwah, 
who lay there weeping, arose in astonishment at the sight. 
Then the bird opened its beak and said to the woman : 

"Arise and follow me! Jehovah has seen thy tears, 
and will reunite thee to thy husband." 

So she followed the raven, who flew before her, 
lighting the way with its sparkling eyes, and just before 
daybreak the two arrived at the grotto wherein Kanuch 
was concealed. 

Then cried the raven, "Kanuch, open to thy wife." 

Then the bird flew back to Heaven. 

Nine months later Ragwah gave birth to the child 
Saleh, who, we are told, was the exact likeness of Seth, 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 79 

the son of Adam, and who appeared with a halo on his 
brow, such as is seen on pictures of Jehovah's saints. 

Soon after this event Kanuch died. Then the same 
bird of Paradise that had led Ragwah to the grotto ap- 
peared again, and led her and the child back to their 
old home. Saleh grew up in beauty and strength, a pride 
to the whole neighborhood. 

When he became a young man a war was being waged 
between the Thamudites and the descendants of Ham, 
and the colored people were winning all the battles; so 
Jehovah had Saleh, wearing the halo on his head, sud- 
denly appear on the battlefield and the tide turned, and 
the Thamudites routed the enemy. 

This made Saleh popular with the people, but it filled 
the king with jealousy; so he had a number of assassins 
sent to take Saleh's Hfe. However, no sooner would one 
of these come near to Saleh to kill him, than Jehovah 
caused his hands to wither and become powerless. 

Finally Saleh converted enough heathen to build a 
temple to Jehovah. But one day the king surrounded the 
temple with his troops and swore he would put to death 
Saleh and his followers, unless a miracle was performed 
to prove that Jehovah was the real god. Saleh went to 
a date-tree that stood near and began to pray; and im- 
mediately all the leaves on the tree became snakes and 
scorpions that chased and bit the king and all his soldiers. 
At the same time two doves that made their home in the 
terrace of Jehovah's temple sang out : 

''Believe in Saleh, he is a prophet and messenger of 
Jehovah!" 



80 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

The king and his soldiers, who were bitten by the 
magic reptiles, were now stretched on the ground moan- 
ing in agony, their limbs all swollen, and about to die. 
This sight softened the heart of Saleh and he prayed to 
Jehovah to let up. Jehovah answered the prayer, and 
the snakes and scorpions immediately became date leaves 
again, and took their proper places on the tree. The men 
they had bitten also became well. 

Still the king and his loyal followers refused to ac- 
knowledge Jehovah, and continued to worship their 
heathen god. This made Saleh angry, and he prayed to 
Jehovah to destroy them all. 

But Jehovah was not yet ready for the massacre. His 
mercy still held out. So he sent an angel, who put Saleh, 
like the story of Rip Van Winkle, to sleep for twenty 
years. When he awoke he went to the temple he had 
built, thinking he had only slept for a night. But he 
found the temple destroyed, and all his converts dead or 
backslidden. He fell down on his face and wept. Then 
the angel Gabriel appeared, and said to him : 

^'Thou wert hasty in desiring the destruction of this 
people, therefore Jehovah hath withdrawn from thy life 
twenty years, which he has taken from thee in sleep. 
Now he sends thee precious relics wherewith to estab- 
lish thy mission; to wit, Adam's shirt, AbeFs sandals, 
Enoch's seal ring, Noah's sword, and Hud's staff." 

The next day, as King Djundu and his brother Schihab, 
with the priests and princes, were leading a procession 
to the heathen temple, Saleh ran before them and stood 
in the doorway. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 81 

''Who art thou?" demanded the king, who did not 
recognize Saleh after his twenty years' sleep. 

Then spoke Saleh : "I am Saleh, the messenger of the 
only true God, who preached to you twenty years ago, 
and showed you many signs and wonders, but you would 
not believe. And now once more I appear unto you to 
give you a proof of my mission. Ask what miracle I 
shall perform and it shall be done." 

Then said the king, "Bring me here out of the rock a 
camel one hundred ells long, of every color under the 
sun, Avhose eyes are like lightning and v/hose feet are 
swifter than the wind.** 

Saleh said he would do this. 

Then the heathen high-priest, Davud, who was stand- 
ing by, said, "Let its fore-feet be golden and its hind-feet 
silver, its head of emerald and its ears of ruby. Let it 
bear on its hump a tent of silver, woven w^ith gold threads 
and adorned with pearls, resting on four pillars of dia- 
monds.'* 

Saleh agreed to bring the animal forth according to 
the description given. 

Then the king added, "And let it bring with it a foal 
like to its mother, just born, and running by her side: 
then will I believe in Jehovah, and in thee as his prophet." 

"And Vv'ilt thou believe, too?" asked Saleh of the high- 
priest. 

"Yes/* answered Davud, "if she will give milk with- 
out being milked, cold in summer and warm in winter.*' 

"And one thing more,** spoke the king*s brother Schi- 
hab, "the milk must heal the sick, enrich the poor, and 



82 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

the camel must of its own accord go into every house and 
fill the pails with milk." 

*'Be it according to your will/' said Saleh. ''But I 
warn you — nobody must injure the camel, deprive it of 
its food or drink, attempt to ride it, or use it for any 
kind of labor." 

Everybody agreeing to this proposition, Saleh lifted 
up his eyes and prayed to Jehovah. 

"And," we are told, "the earth opened under his feet 
and a well of fragrant water gushed up, and poured over 
the rock, and the rock was rent," and out stepped the 
wonderful camel and her new-born foal, exactly filling 
the bill required by the heathen. 

It was one of the most spectacular performances of 
magic recorded of Jehovah, and should find its place in 
the orthodox creeds. It almost equals Elijah's trany)or- 
tation to Heaven in a chariot of fire, drawn by celestial 
steeds of the same material. 

At the sight of the camel, we are told the king fell on 
Saleh's neck, kissed him, confessed his faith in Jehovah, 
and was saved. 

But his brother Schihab and the high priest Davud de- 
clared it was the work of the Devil. 

It -was hard in those days to decide whether it was 
Satan or Jehovah doing the tricks. 

However, v.s the camel went about daily giving milk 
to the people — w^ho only had to set their pails where the 
camel could straddle them, and the milk came of its ow^n 
accord — many people became converted to Jehovah. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 83 

Moreover the camel, say the Mussulmans, never failed to 
say grace when she ate or drank. 

But Schihab, the king's brother, still sticking to his 
heathen god, and plotting to overturn the king and occupy 
the throne himself, promised his beautiful daughter Raj an 
to whoever would kill the camel. So a young peasant 
named Kaddar, who had for a long while been smitten 
with the charms of the princess, armed himself with a 
big sword and went after the animal. He came upon her 
as she was saying grace, just prior to taking a drink of 
water ; and with a stroke of his sword wounded the magic 
creature in the hock. 

At once, under the charm of Jehovah, all nature — 
rocks, trees and streams — uttered a fearful cry. This 
frightened the would-be bridegroom of the beautiful 
Raj an so that he ran to the top of a mountain and 
screamed : 

"Jehovah's curse on you, ye heathen people!'' 

He had immediately become a convert to Jehovah's 
religion. 

During the excitement that followed Schihab seized 
the throne and proclaimed himself king, and threatened 
death to all who denied his authority. Everybody took 
the oath of allegiance to the new ruler but Saleh and 
King Djunda, who were obliged to make a hasty escape; 
but not before Saleh had pronounced a doom on the 
wicked heathen. 

"Three days," he cried, "are given you for repentance; 
after that ye shall all perish." 

The following day the faces of all the heathen turned 



84 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

yellow, and wherever the wounded camel limped a spring 
of blood bubbled up out of the earth. On the second day 
all their faces turned blood-red, and on the third day 
they became as black as coals. That same evening a pair 
of scarlet wings grew on the camel, and she flew with 
her foal on her back to Paradise. 

Then Jehovah rained down mountains of fire, as he 
had on Sodom ; and Hell, which was in those days located 
under the flat earth, blew brimstone and sulphur flames 
through a great crack, and all the heathen became a heap 
of ashes. 

Only Saleh, the prophet of Jehovah, and the converted 
King Djunda, were left alive. 

(Those acquainted with Mussulman legends and scrip- 
tures w^ill note that the only change made by the writer 
is in the use of "Jehovah" instead of "Allah'' in refer- 
ence to "God." However, it will be readily admitted, the 
Mussulman "Allah" and the Jewish Jehovah are in fact 
one and the same god. The Koran follows the old Jew^- 
ish scriptures, starting with the creation of Adam, even 
to the acknowledgement of Jesus as a prophet.) 



CHAPTER V. 

T SAAC, the son of Abraham, lived to grow up and 
-*• marry and raise a family. He had a son, called 
Jacob, who worked as a hired hand for a farmer named 
Laban. Laban had two daughters, Leah and Rachel. 
Rachel was the younger and best looking of the two, and 
Jacob naturally fell in love with her, and finally won her 
father's consent to marry her by promising to milk the 
cows and do all the chores for seven years without pay. 
The seven years up, Jacob demanded his bride, and 
Laban apparently prepared to fulfill his part of the con- 
tract. He gave a big wedding dinner, to w^hich be in- 
vited all the men of the neighborhood, with the assur- 
ance that when they had all ate and drank their fill he 
would turn Rachel over to the groom. 

In those days women did not attend these blowouts. 
The women did the work. 

The wedding feast, as was the custom among these old- 
timers, lasted all day; the result being that when night 
came Jacob had imbibed so much of his father-in-law's 
wine that his brain was completely befuddled. Then La- 
ban, who had kept sober, played a shrewd swindle on 
the tipsy groom; the outcome of which was that when 
Jacob came to his senses in the morning he found him- 
self in possession of the elderly Leah instead of Rachel. 
He jumped into his overalls and started after Papa La- 
ban with blood in his eye. But finally Laban smoothed 



86 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

matters over by giving him Rachel also, upon condi- 
tion that he worked on the farm for seven years more. 

But Jacob never did learn to like Leah. This caused 
Jehovah to become friendly with Leah (Genesis xxix, 
verse 31). The consequence of this friendship was that 
Leah had a number of children, while Rachel had none. 

This naturally made Rachel envious, so she followed 
the example of her grandmother, Sarah. Rachel owned 
a female slave, by the name of Bilhah, that her father 
had given to her as a wedding present. Now Jehovah 
had passed a law that turned all the children borne by 
a female slave over to the party that owned the slave. 
This looked better than nothing at all to Rachel, and she 
told Jacob so; the result was that two sons were born 
to her via Bilhah. 

About this time Jehovah quit having anything more to 
do with Leah, and the stork ceased his regular visits. 
But Leah didn't propose to be outclassed by her sister 
Rachel. She, too, had a wedding present from her 
father — a chocolate blonde by the name of Zilpah. Jacob 
fell an easy victim to this second conspiracy, and Leah 
soon became the foster-mother of two muUatoes. 

The morals of these holy men of old appear to have 
been somewhat shaky. 

When Jehovah heard of all this his friendship for 
Leah came back; he had a talk with her, and she gave 
birth to two more sons and one daughter. This was 
more than Rachel could stand, and she complained bit- 
terly to Jehovah the next time she met him. Her com- 
plaint softened his heart, so that Rachel at last had a 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH . 87 

boy of her own, whom she called Joseph, who finally 
was sold by his half-brothers to some wandering Egyp- 
tian slave-dealers, and was taken down to Egypt, whither 
after a few years all the children of Israel (which was 
the name Jehovah gave to Jacob) followed, only to be 
finally captured and enslaved by the royalty and aristoc- 
racy of that land, in which dire condition they and their 
children's children spent an unhappy existence working 
in brick yards. They became such prolific breeders, and 
had "increased" so "abundantly," runs the inspired rec- 
ord, that Jehovah didn't know how to manage to get 
them out of Egypt. Pharaoh turned down all proposi- 
tions to let them go. 

Now there was a man among the Israelites by the 
name of Moses, who had a brother, Aaron, both of whom 
Jehovah enchanted, so that they became great magicians. 
Aaron had a charmed rod, and when he dropped this rod 
on the ground it turned into a snake ; and then he would 
pick the snake up by the tail, and it became a rod again. 
Moses could put his hand under his shirt, and when he 
took it out it was withered and white and leprous; then 
he would put it under his shirt again and pull it out 
healthy and strong. 

Moses went to Pharaoh and worked some of his sorc- 
ery, and told him if he didn't let the children of Israel de- 
part in peace he would do some conjuring that would 
put the whole population of Egypt out of commission. 
Pharaoh laughed. He sent for some of his own magi- 
cians, who were enchanted by the Egyptian gods, and 
they, too, threw their sticks on the ground and they be- 



88 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

came snakes. Then Aaron threw down his stick, and, 
with the assistance of Jehovah, it turned into a monster 
snake and swallowed all the snakes conjured by the 
Egyptian magicians. This, of course, ended tlie perform- 
ance, and, according to the inspired record, would have 
induced Pharaoh to let the children of Israel depart, only 
Jehovah immediately ''hardened Pharaoh's heart." 

Jehovah had hardly started his magic and he didn't 
propose to have the curtain rung down till the whole 
show was over. The most thrilling acts were yet to ap- 
pear, Avith the final blood-curdling tragedy of Jehovah 
himself on a wild night-raid through Egypt butchering 
babies by the wholesale. Jehovah, before he got 
through, had vowed to make the Egyptian magicians 
look like pikers. 

Leading up to this climax Jehovah tantalized Pharaoh 
and all his subjects with a fearful assortment of plagues. 
He turned the rivers and creeks into blood, and loaded 
Egypt so full of bullfrogs that they swarmed the peo- 
ple's bedchambers; and then Pharaoh's magicians did the 
same trick. Then Jehovah conjured a sorcery that baffled 
the Egyptians — he had Aaron smite the dust of the earth 
with his charmed stick, and it all turned into body lice. 
Pharaoh's magicians smote the earth, but they couldn't 
raise a louse. Jehovah walked off with the belt. 

After this Pharaoh declared himself ready to surrender 
and let the children of Israel go — said he wouldn't suf- 
fer this way any longer for all the brick-makers on earth ; 
but Jehovah ''hardened his heart" again, so that he was 
ready to stand for another plague. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 89 

Jehovah was having the time of his life tormenting the 
heathen. He was setting a precedent for his priests to 
thereafter follow in handling heretics. 

He tormented the Egyptians with myriads of flies, and 
even took his spite out on the Egyptian cattle ; these poor 
beasts Jehovah tortured, we are told, with "a very- 
grievous murrain," so that they died; and there was no 
society for the prevention of cruelty to animals to stop 
him. 

Then Jehovah had Moses and Aaron shake a lot of 
ashes in the air, and everybody but the children of Israel 
became covered with boils. Even the Egyptian magicians 
caught them. Then he made it rain hail, and every 
Egyptian, and all their live stock, that was struck with 
this hail, immediately perished. After this Jehovah filled 
the country with great swarms of locusts. Then he had 
Moses stretch out his hand and thick darkness covered 
the land. Then he staged the last tragic act It is the 
bloodiest tale ever narrated. 

In the blackness of a starless midnight Jehovah strode 
through Egypt with a bludgeon in his fist and beat the 
brains out of the firstborn of every man and beast. The 
shrieks of mangled and dying infants — the death moans 
of the colts and kids and calves — were music in Jehovah's 
ears. The only way the children of Israel escaped the 
holocaust was because they had sprinkled their doors \vi\h 
plenty of fresh lamb's blood. By the dim light of the 
flame from his mouth Jehovah saw that blood on the 
^oors and passed the Israelites by. Then he started them 
on their way to the Promised Land, assuring them that 



90 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

when they reached there he would help them kill the 
natives, so they could take it for themselves. 

But in the meantime he hardened Pharaoh's heart 
once more so that he gathered his army and gave chase. 
Pharaoh caught up with the escaping children of Israel 
just as they were about half way through the Red Sea. 
Jehovah had stood the waters up on end so that they 
could walk across. Pharaoh and his hosts plunged in 
after them. This was just the trap that Jehovah had 
set. The children of Israel had no more than climbed 
up the other side, with Pharaoh and his hosts strung 
along in the middle of the sea, than Jehovah let loose 
his hold on the waters and drowned the whole horde of 
Egyptians like so many rats, 

All this is told in the inspired Book of Exodus, chap- 
ters vii to xiv, inclusive. 

The Christian w^orld to this day is largely indebted to 
Jehovah for its rules regarding civilized warfare. 

In order to show them the way to the Promised Land, 
Jehovah had a pillar of cloud travel in front of them all 
day. When they journeyed after dark an angel went 
ahead with a lantern. 

Their way lay through a barren country, and they 
would have starved if Jehovah hadn't sprinkled the land 
with prepared breakfast-food every night. When their 
stomachs revolted at a continuous diet of this preparation 
of Paradise peanut shells, Jehovah showered quails on 
them. When they were dry Moses would punch a rock 
with his walking-stick and fresh water rushed forth. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 91 

Jehovah stayed right by Moses during the entire trip, 
which lasted forty years. 

They had many fights with heathen along the route. 
In one of these Jehovah had Moses hold up his hands, 
and as long as he held them up the children of Israel 
had the best of it; but when Moses grew weary and let 
his hands drop the heathen would win. Finally, finding 
that Jehovah lost out every time Moses collapsed, a 
couple of Israelites stood on each side of him and bol- 
stered^ up his arms. By sundown Jehovah had annihilated 
the last heathen in sight. 

After roaming about for three months the children of 
Israel finally came into the wilderness of Sinai, so called 
after the mountain of that name. Here Jehovah made 
a public exhibition of himself in fire and smoke and 
thunder and earthquake. He surrounded the mountain 
with a thick cloud, and gave warning that the first man 
or beast that broke through the cloud and gazed on his 
person would be stoned to death. Only Moses and his 
brother Aaron did Jehovah allow to climb to the top of 
the mountain, and then he only permitted Moses to see 
his hind parts. (Exodus, xxxiii, verse 23). There 
Jehovah gave to Moses divinely inspired laws to govern 
the people. Part of these laws he wrote with his finger 
on a piece of stone; the rest he whispered into Moses' 
ear. 

The first of these laws commanded the Jews to never 
dare acknowledge any other god or gods except Jeho- 
vah. 



92 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

The Christians, who have added two more gods to 
the Hst, send the Jews to Hell for obeying this law. 

Another law that Jehovah gave made art a crime. 
He forbade the carving of any image of anything in 
Heaven, earth or sea. 

Laws against murder and theft were given. How- 
ever, these laws did not appply to killing and robbing the 
heathen. 

Adultery, on the part of the w-oman, was a capital 
crime. With a man it was merely a misdemeanor, pun- 
ishable by a light fine. 

To covet your neighbor's property was an offense. 
The neighbor's wives were catalogued with his barnyard 
stock as property. 

Jehovah was a Bourbon democrat in politics and 
made special laws governing chattel slavery. The traffic 
in home-grown slaves, as told in the divinely inspired 
record contained in Exodus xxi, verse 2, was limited to 
six years' ownership of the victim. However, if his 
master, out of the kindness of his heart and with an eye 
to business, had given him a wife, and she had borne 
children, then, says Jehovah, when he is set free the 
wife and children belong to the master, and the slave 
must wander off alone. If the poor fellow finds his 
love for his wife and little ones stronger than his de- 
sire for freedom, then the great and good Jehovah or- 
dained a law by which the master stood the slave up 
against a barn door and bored a hole in his ear, and 
thereby the slave became his property forever. This 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 93 

tender and humane law is found in Exodus xxi, verse 6, 
of the divinely inspired record. 

The next law^ that Jehovah gave, as told in verse 7 
of the same chapter and book, allowed a father to sell 
his daughter to anybody that had the price. In the 
same chapter, Jehovah commanded that if an ox gored 
a man or woman, said ox should be publicly taken out 
and executed. Like John Wesley and Cotton Mather, 
Jehovah was a firm believer in witchcraft. In Exodus 
xxii, verse 18, he orders them to be killed. 

Along the road the children of Israel were traveling 
on their way to the Promised Land were fierce tribes 
of Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites. Jehovah scattered 
these with swarms of hornets. This was considered to 
be wathin the limits of civilized warfare. 

The Israelites offered sacrifices to Jehovah of every- 
thing imaginable. Moses used up barrels of blood; he 
not only covered the altars, but also splattered the people 
with it. It was a sight to see them on their way back 
from prayer-meeting with their faces all streaked and 
the blood dripping down their shirt fronts. 

Besides rams and goats and young bulls, Jehovah, as 
told in Exodus xxv of the inspired record, gave a list 
of other things he declared should be offered to him, 
viz. : "Gold, and silver, and brass, and blue, and purple, 
and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair, and rams' 
skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood, 
oil for the light, spices for anointing oil, and for sweet 
incense, onyx stones, and stones to be set in the ephod, 
and in the breastplate." Dolled up in all his jewelry. 



94 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

and goat-hair, and red ram-skin, and badgcr-pelt, and 
properly greased with the oil and incense, Jehovah was 
some class. And then, what do you know about this? — 
Jehovah had them make a cute little box, all covered 
with fancy fixings, and in this box, locked up tight, 
Jehovah himself would take temporary abode! You see 
Jehovah could make himself big or little at will. Then 
Jehovah had them build an altar and stand it outside 
the box, to be kept smoking with the roasting flesh of 
animals. He also had a sign hung outside, to warn 
trespassers away, that read ''Holiness to the Lord." Any- 
body that tampered wath the box was stoned to death. 
The box and the altar were perfumed every day with a 
special perfume. 

Even with all this spectacular evidence in view^ some 
of the people, we are told, lost their faith in Jehovah, 
and so, during Moses' absence, Aaron, who was some- 
what of a sculptor, made them a gold calf to worship. 
They probably figured that the calf, even if it could do 
them no good, could do them no harm. When Jehovah 
discovered what had been done he fell into a fit of fury. 
Moses tried to quiet him down, but Jehovah cried : "Let 
me alone, Mose, that my wrath may wax hot against 
them, that I may consume them.'' These are Jehovah's 
words, as told in Exodus xxxii, verse lo. And sure 
enough, after Jehovah's wrath had waxed awhile, it got 
good and hot. He deputized a number of priests — ^the 
sons of Levi — and ordered them to start a slaughter. 
They killed three thousand of the heretics. Centuries 
afterward Jehovah's priests pulled off a similar slaughter 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 95 

on St. Bartholomew's Day in Paris. Such is the power 
of example. 

Finally Jehovah's wrath, that had waxed hot, cooled 
down, and he forgave the Israelites for making foolish- 
ness of him with their gold calf. 

Jehovah laid down special laws regarding burnt 
sacrifices. He was very particular as to how his meat 
should be cooked. The divinely inspired record of Leviti- 
cus starts off the first chapter and devotes several more to 
telling how to broil animals so as to satisfy Jehovah's 
smell. The legs and inwards of the animal must be thor- 
oughly washed by the priest. The ''parts, the head, and 
the fat," had to go on the fire first. If the offering was 
a sheep, it had to be killed on the north side of the altar. 
Pigeons and other fowls had their necks wrung, and the 
feathers cast on the east side. Anybody, from a king to 
the common people, who had committed a crime, could 
square themselves with Jehovah if they would follow the 
proper directions in offering up a goat or sheep. For 
instance, if it was a ruler that had sinned, he used a male 
goat; if it was one of the common people a female sheep 
would do the work. Anybody versed in theology will 
realize how important these distinctions are, 

Jehovah made strict rules regarding the style of cloth- 
ing the priests should w^ear when officiating at sacri- 
fices or other divine services. Also how they should trim 
their whiskers. Also he commanded them to cut out 
booze on these occasions. 

Jehovah prepared a bill of fare, telling what kind of 
animals could be eaten, and what could not. He barred 



96 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

pigs, camels and rabbits. Also eels and oysters. Among 
the birds he tabooed eagles, vultures, crows and owls. 
Locusts, beetles and grasshoppers were allowed on the 
menu. Worms and caterpillars were prohibited. 

Jehovah gave the priests medical instructions in regard 
to scabs, boils, pimples and sore spots in general. The 
patient was immediately locked up long enough to dis- 
cover whether his complaint was a case of leprosy, or 
only some ordinary variety of itch. If it was only the 
itch, an offering of lamb's blood mixed with oil would 
in time cure him; if it was leprosy there was no hope. 
It appears, as told in Leviticus xiv, verse 34, of the di- 
vinely inspired record, that Jehovah had an object in view 
regarding the fatal disease of leprosy that had been con- 
tracted in Egypt; he proposed to use it to plague the 
natives of the Promised Land, whom he had planned to 
drive out so he could turn over their country to the chil- 
dren of Israel. 

Among the moral laws that Jehovah gave his people 
was one that forbade a young man from removing the 
clothing from his father, or any of his father's numerous 
wives or relatives. Such pranks as this had to be per- 
petrated on strangers. It was a crime for a Hebrew to 
cut his hair or shave. Any man or woman caught with 
a "familiar spirit" was stoned to death. If a woman 
com.mitted adultery, Jehovah had her stoned to death. If 
she happened to be the daughter of a priest the offense 
was still w^orse — Jehovah ordered her burned (Leviticus 
XXI, verse 9). With the male population it was different. 
Jehovah said it was all right for a man to make a white- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 97 

slave of his own sister, if she failed to get a husband 
(Leviticus, xxi, verse 3). 

Jehovah was exceedingly particular himself as to what 
sort of men should offer sacrifices to him. Any one that 
was blind, or lame, or had a pug nose, or corns, or bun- 
ions, or a finger gone, or a crooked back, or if he was 
too short, or too long, or was cross-eyed, or several other 
blemishes mentioned, could never offer up a goat to the 
glory of Jehovah. We find this divinely recorded in 
Leviticus, xxi, verses 16 to 21. 

There was nothing made Jehovah so furious as to 
make fun of him. Blasphemy was a mortal crime to the 
god that sanctioned slavery and polygamy and murder. 
He had a young man whose mother was an Israelite and 
his father an Egyptian, stoned to death for this (Levi- 
ticus, xxiv, verses 10 to 14). 

With Jehovah poverty was a felony. He ordered the 
poor to sell themselves to some master. He told the 
people if they would obey his laws, and worship him, 
and offer him plenty of sacrifices, he would help them 
kill off everybody that got in their way; but if they 
didn't do as he said he would wreak all manner of ven- 
geance on them. Their enemies would defeat them in 
battle, and he would smite them with pestilence and 
disease. 

Many of the ordinances given by Jehovah, especially 
regarding women, disclosing his justice and goodness 
and mercy, cannot be enlarged upon on account of the 
postal laws. Others can only be understood and appre- 
ciated by the learned doctors of divinity. For instance. 



98 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

in Numbers v, verses 17 to 31 of the divinely inspired 
record, Jehovah told how a suspicious husband could de- 
termine whether his wife was true or not. He should 
take her to the priest, and the priest would have her take 
her bonnet off and sit down in front of the box in the 
tabernacle, inside of which was Jehovah himself: Then 
the priest made the woman swallow a quantity of holy 
water that he had specially prepared for the occasion. The 
floor of the tabernacle was conveniently covered with the 
mixture that he put in this water. It was evidently some 
sort of rough-on-rats, to judge from the effect it was 
likely to have on the defendant. We are informed that 
it made the water ''bitter.'' If the dose made the woman 
sick, so that she swelled up, she w^as found guilty; if, 
however, she possessed a powerful enough digestion to 
get away with it, she was declared innocent. They gen- 
erally swelled. Those found guilty were duly cursed by 
the priest ; this, we are told, caused a "rot" to attack the 
woman's insides, from which she never recovered. An 
overdose of the holy water had nothing to do with the 
case; it was a miracle that did the work. 

Finally the children of Israel drew near to the Prom- 
ised Land; but finding it inhabited by mighty men and 
warriors, they doubted Jehovah's ability to turn it over 
to them. This made Jehovah's wrath wax so hot that 
he started in to wipe them all off the earth, save Moses 
and his family. As Moses' wife w^as a negro woman 
(Numbers xii, verse i), this would have made the Israel- 
ites a race of mulattoes. But when Moses pointed out to 
Jehovah how the Egyptians, when they heard of it, would 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 99 

have the laugh on him, Jehovah let his wrath wax some- 
what cooler; so, as we are told in Numbers xiv, verses 
^8 to 33 of the divinely inspired record, he concluded to 
only kill off the men and women over twenty years of 
age, and let the young men and women live to enter the 
Promised Land. It was to carry out this threat that he 
made them wander forty years in the wilderness. 

In regard to Sabbath observance Jehovah was the 
strictest sort of a Puritan. In Numbers xv, verses 32 to 
36, we are told how he had a poor fellow stoned to death 
for gathering an armful of kindling wood one Saturday 
morning. 

The priesthood, of which Aaron, the brother of Moses, 
was the head, did no work. They v/ere supported, as 
they are today, by voluntary^ offerings. Anybody that 
refused to voluntarily contribute was put to death for 
heresy. Now they are consigned to Hell. 

At one time a number of the people c:ombined, and pro- 
tested against the size of the offerings that they were 
forced to voluntarily contribute to feed the priests. 
Moses, with the help of Jehovah, settled the matter by 
causing the earth to open up and swallow them, with their 
women, children, horses, sheep and goats (Numbers 
xvi). 

Among other good tilings that Jehovah ordained 
should go to the priests were the choice cuts of the beef 
and mutton that were offered as sacrifices. Also the first 
pick of the fruits, wine and oil. The fat, the inwards, the 
bones, and the tough parts of the animal were about all 
Jehovah got a smell of. The priests ate the rest. 



100 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

In order to display his power and glory, as told in 
Numbers xxi, JehoA^ah once sent hordes of red-hot, blaz- 
ing snakes among the people. When these snakes bit a 
man he usually died. Then Jehovah told Moses to make 
a big snake of brass and hang it on a pole. When one 
of Jehovah's fiery snakes bit a man or woman, all they 
had to do was to make a bee-line for Moses' brass snake 
on the pole. One look at the thing cured the snake bite. It 
seems a pity this brass snake couldn't have been preserved 
for future use in prohibition territory. 

A remarkable occurrence at this period, as narrated in 
the divinely inspired record, was the experience that a 
man by the name of Balaam had with a lady donkey. It 
happened just after Jehovah had helped the Israelites 
massacre a tribe called Amorites, who, it seems, objected 
to the Israelites tearing up their country and ruining the 
crops. Balaam started on a journey to meet Balak, king 
of the tribe of Moabites. He did this against special 
orders from Jehovah. Jehovah stopped him^ on the way 
by having an angel, with a sword in his hand, stand in 
the middle of tlie road. Balaam could not see the angel, 
but the donkey could, and it startled her so that she 
balked up against a stone fence and mashed one of 
Balaam's legs. Balaam used his club, and, as the angel 
had moved a bit further down the road, the donkey started 
along once more. She didn't go far, however, before 
there again stood the angel, sword and all, at a narrow 
spot where there was no chance to dodge to right or left. 
The donkey was now so frightened that she completely 
collapsed. Balaam pounded her, but it was no use; she 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 101 

wouldn't budge. Then Jehovah, who was hiding all the 
while behind a tree, enchanted the jenny so that she 
opened her mouth and told Balaam all about it. Then 
he put a charm on Balaam so that he, too, saw the angel. 
Then the angel talked to Balaam, and told him that if 
the donkey had tried to pass him he would have stuck his 
sword through Balaam, and let the donkey go on. 
It was a close call for Balaam. 



CHAPTER VI. 

TEHOViAH was not always satisfied with the sacri- 
^ fice of bulls and goats and sheep. Sometimes it re- 
quired human beings to soothe his wrath. Isaac's escape 
from the altar was a rare exhibition of Jehovah's loving 
kindness. Others did not fare so well. 

In the divinely inspired record of Second Samuel, 
chapter xxi, we are told that David offered up seven 
human beings in one lump to Jehovah, in order to insure 
a good crop that year. Five of these victims, according 
to the record, were the sons of Michal by a previous hus- 
band, Michal being one of David's wives at the time Da- 
vid sacrificed her sons to Jehovah. Her father, Saul, had 
taken her away from her first husband, and had given 
her to David (First Samuel, xviii, verse 2y). Another 
instance told in the divinely inspired record of offering 
a human being to Jehovah is found in the eleventh chap- 
ter of Judges. A saint by the name of Jephthah killed 
his only daughter and roasted her body on a sacred altar. 
There were no lunatic asylums in those days. Other 
Jewish records bear testimony that human sacrifices to 
Jehovah were of common occurrence. Dr. Kalisch, the 
celebrated Jewish commentator, says, in his work on 
"Leviticus," Part I, page 385, that "the fact stands in- 
disputable that human sacrifices offered to Jehovah were 
possible among the Hebrews long after the time of 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 103 

Moses, without meeting a check or censure from the 
teachers and leaders of the nation." And on page 390 
of the same book he says : *Tious men slaughtered human 
victims not to Moloch, nor to any other foreign deity, 
but to the national God, Jehovah." And in his "Religion 
of Israel," page 46, Jules Soury says: "Nothing is bet- 
ter established than the existence of human sacrifices 
among the Hebrews in honor of Jehovah, and that down 
to the time of Josiah, perhaps even until the return from 
the Babylonian captivity." According to the teachings of 
the learned theologians of the present day the climax of 
these bloody sacrifices to quiet the fury of Jehovah took 
place in Jerusalem, a little over 1900 years ago, when 
Jehovah had his own son, whom he had begotten of a 
virgin, offered up. However, we will reach this later in 
the history of this god. 

The god Moloch, referred to by Dr. Kalish, was quite 
a prominent deity in those days. Where Moloch, as well 
as the other heathen gods, hailed from the inspired rec- 
ords do not state. However, as Jehovah created every- 
thing, he must have made these. Moloch became so great 
a god that at one time it was a close race as to whether he 
or Jehovah were the greatest. Finally Jehovah won out 
by a small majority. 

King Solomon, who is recognized by all theologians as 
being the wisest creature that ever lived, as well as one 
of the most illustrious of the divinely inspired oracles, 
was once strongly in favor of Moloch, and erected a 
temple to him, "in the hill that is before Jerusalem." 
You will find an account of it in First Kings, eleventh 



104 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

chapter. It appears that a number of Solomon's wives 
were members of Moloch's church, and Solomon thought 
it was wiser to worship Moloch than to be arguing all 
the time with his women folks over religion. Finally, 
however, Solomon quit the god Moloch and decided on 
Jehovah. 

One thing in favor of Jehovah was that he was the 
best war god of the two. There is no record of Moloch 
ever recommending any such slaughter of men, women 
and children, and the debauching of innocent maidens, as 
accredited to Jehovah in the thirty-first chapter of Num- 
bers. Moloch seemed to be satisfied with human sacri- 
fices and did not care to make a white slave-herder of 
himself. 

It appears, however, that about the only serious dis- 
pute between the religious doctrines of Moloch and Jeho- 
vah was in the manner of offering up human sacrifices. 
Moloch had his roasted in a brass oven, over a blazing 
furnace. IntO' this oven the naked bodies of the victims 
were flung alive by the holy priests. These victims were 
nearly always young girls. Jehovah took his roasted raw 
on a stone altar. This is the way he told Abraham to 
offer up Isaac, and this is the way he had Jephthah sac- 
rifice his only daughter. He said he liked the smell of 
burning flesh — said it was a sweet savor to his nostrils. 
Shoving a live person into a brass oven and then closing 
the door, so that the fumes only escaped through a flue, 
as was the case with sacrifices offered to Moloch, didn't 
circulate as rich a smell as roasting them on a pile of 
stones in the open air. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 105 

Another ceremony that Jehovah recommended to his 
followers was cannibalism. In the fifth chapter of Eze- 
kiel, verse lO, we read that ''The fathers shall eat the 
sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their 
fathers/' Doubtless the sons, being young and tender, 
were broiled and fried ; while the old gents, being tough, 
were stewed. In Leviticus, chapter xxvi and verse 29, 
is found the following holy command : **And ye shall eat 
the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters 
shall ye eat." In the inspired nineteenth chapter of Jere- 
miah, verse 9, Jehovah said, ''And I will cause them to 
eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daugh- 
ters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend." 
In Deuteronomy, chapter xxviii, verses 53-57, we read: 
''And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, and the 
flesh of thy sons and thy daughters. * * * So that 
the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his 
eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife 
of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children 
which he shall leave; so that he will not give to any of 
them the flesh of his children whom he shall eat. * * * 
The tender and delicate woman among you, which would 
not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground 
for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil to- 
ward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, 
and toward her daughter, * * * fQ,j. 5]^^ shall eat 
them." In Lamentations, fourth chapter and verse 10, it 
says: "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden 
(boiled) their own children." In the sixth chapter of 
the second book of Kings, verses 28-29, we find the story 



106 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

how one woman cheated another woman out of a square 
meal. It reads : "And the king said unto her, What ail- 
eth thee? (the woman was hungry.) And she answered, 
This woman said unto me. Give thy son that we may eat 
him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we 
boiled my son, and did eat him. And I said unto her 
the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him; and 
she hath hid her son.'* 

Following these injunctions of Jehovah as a religious 
rite, some of the early Christians ate their own babies. 
Dr. Cave, in his "Primitive Christianity,'' Part Third, 
first chapter, says : "Epiphanius reports that the Gnostics 
(a sect of primitive Christians) at their meetings were 
wont to take an infant begotten in their promiscuous 
mixtures, and, beating it in a mortar, to season it with 
honey and pepper and some other spices and perfumes to 
make it palatable, and then like swine or dogs to devour 
it, and then to conclude all with prayer.'' 

The law regarding divorce, as laid down by Jehovah, 
was very simple, so far as the male population was con- 
cerned. As Jehovah classed the females along with the 
cows and sheep and goats, and as he allowed a man to 
have as many wives as he could afford, no divorce law 
was needed for the women. When a man, said Jehovah, 
wanted to get rid of one of his wives because she found 
"no favor in his eyes," then all he had to do was to 
write her "a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, 
and send her out of his house (Deuteronomy, xxiv, verse 

I)." 

A very handy law — for the men. No need of a law- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 107 

yer, no expense or delay of court proceedings. With this 
bill of divorcement in her possession, says the following 
verse of the same inspired book and chapter, all the 
woman had to do w^as to hunt another man and live with 
him. No matter by how many husbands she had chil- 
dren, they all belonged to the father. 

The thirty-first chapter of the divinely inspired book 
of Numbers, already referred to, is especially cherished 
by the war-lords of the world and the owners of the 
Colorado coal mines. Here Jehovah lays down the rules 
of civilized warfare for all time to come, for, we are 
told, in the twenty-first verse of this chapter and book, 
'This is the ordinance of tlie law which the Lord com- 
manded Moses." Starting with the second verse, Jeho- 
vah tells the children of Israel, by way of vengeance, to 
go out and slaughter the tribe of Midianites. With Jeho- 
vah's help the Israelites killed all the adult male Midian- 
ites, but spared the women and children. These, says the 
ninth verse, they took as captives, together with all the 
live stock and personal property belonging to the Midia- 
nites. Then they set fire to all the houses and buildings 
of the Midianites and came back to Moses with the booty. 
When Moses — who, we are told, was the meekest man 
that ever lived — saw that the women and mothers of male 
babies were spared, he flew into a passion. 

"What good are these old ladies ?" said he, "and what 
do we want of male Midianite babies, to grow up and 
become the enemies of Jehovah and his chosen people? 
Kill the whole outfit, except the maidens. We can use 
these." 



108 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

The chosen people acted accordingly, and then, as told 
from verses 25 to 47 of this chapter, Jehovah gave full 
directions as to how the maidens, the Hvestock, and the 
personal property should be divided. Jehovah got the 
largest part of the maidens, as well as the rest of the 
booty. The priests took charge of his share. 

In the twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy, verses 10 
to 14, Jehovah tells how his followers should handle one 
of the maidens captured from the heathen. In the first 
place, says Jehovah, take her home and "shave her head'* 
and "pare her nails." This latter is so she could not 
scratch. Then she is ordered to discard her heathen rai- 
ment. As nothing is said as to what she should then 
wear, it is presumed that she went naked until converted 
to the orthodox faith. Then, out of his mercy and loving 
kindness, Jehovah allowed the maiden to mourn for a 
month the loss of her heathen parents that he had slaught- 
ered before her eyes. After that she became the wife of 
her captor. On account of the way she had been "hum- 
bled" — shaving her head and cutting to the quick her 
finger and toe nails — ^this captive maiden was granted a 
special privilege : her husband could neither sell her out- 
right nor "make merchandise of her." 

Jehovah was strict in regard to the law of primogeni- 
ture. In the fifteenth verse of the chapter quoted he de- 
clares that the firstborn son of a man's first wife shall 
inherit his estate, even if the man loves his other wives 
and hates the first one. However, says Jehovah, verses 
18 to 21 of this chapter, if the boy turns out bad the 
neighbors are called in and the boy is stoned to death. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 109 

In the twenty-second chapter of the divinely inspired 
book of Deuteronomy, verses 13 to 21, Jehovah says that 
if a man charges that his bride is not a virgin, and she 
be proven innocent, the man shall be made to pay a fine 
of a ''hundred shekels" to the girl's father. If, on tha 
other hand the bride be found guilty, she shall be stoned 
to death. Jehovah makes no mention about inquiring 
into the man^s record previous to his marriage. 

In passing it may be remarked that marriage cere- 
monies were performed in those days by the groom turn- 
ing over to his father-in-law a certain number of goats, 
for which he received a bill of sale for the bride. Jeho- 
vah's marriage law, like his divorce law, w^as nicely ar- 
ranged for the convenience of the men. 

In the twenty-fifth chapter of the divinely inspired 
book of Deuteronomy, verse 11, Jehovah gave rules re- 
garding slugging matches and duels. They must be al- 
lowed to go on to a finish, with no interference from out- 
siders. If a wife of one of the contestants, who is get- 
ting the worst of it, helps her husband as best she knows 
how, Jehovah orders her hand to be chopped off with an 
axe. 

Jehovah closes the twenty-seventh chapter of his divi- 
nely inspired record of Deuteronomy with a curse on 
those who do not obey all the laws he has made. The 
next chapter details the rewards and punishments de- 
creed. He threatened unbelievers and transgressors witli 
an itch that couldn't be cured; with insanity and blind- 
ness; that he would cause their wives to become harlots, 
and all their cattle to die; he said he woula cover them 



no LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

with the botch from head to foot, and have their sons 
and daughters sold into slavery ; also that they should eat 
their own children. Every disease, plague and pestilence 
known to the medical profession of that day were threat- 
ened to overtake them. If a hungry Hebrew dined on a 
piece of pork he w^as given the whole dose at once. 

An instance of Jehovah's jealousy and fury is told in 
the inspired book of Numbers, xxv. It happened when 
the Israelites were stopping at a place called Shittim. Here 
the Israelites not only courted the captivating daughters 
of the natives, but they also went to prayer meeting with 
them and worshiped heathen gods. Jehovah waited until 
his wrath waxed over the boiling point and then lit 
in. He first had Moses hang all the heads of the Jewish 
leading families. He had them hung, we are told, 
'^against the sim,'' where he could get a good look at 
them. Then he had Moses kill everybody who had at- 
tended these heathen services. Then he sent a plague 
that carried away twenty-four thousand. There was a 
young Jew by the name of Zimri that had fallen in love 
with a heathen girl by the name of Cozbi, and had 
brought her to his home. A priest by the name of Phine- 
has, who was a grandson of Aaron, armed himself with 
a long spike and went to where the groom and his heathen 
bride were living. He first stuck his spike through the 
man, and as soon as he was out of the way, this holy 
man of God ripped open the woman's belly and w^atched 
her die. This tickled Jehovah so that his wrath cooled 
down a bit and he stopped the plague. If it had not 
have been for the gallant deed of Phinehas, says Jehovah, 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 111 

in the ele\^enth verse of the book and chapter quoted, he 
would have consumed every Israelite with his plague. 

The Jews, in the hands of Jehovah, have had many a 
narrow escape from utter extinction. 

The Christians, up to within recent years, and even 
now in Russia, have faithfully patterned after Jehovah's 
method of handling the Jews, at the time they resided in 
Shittim. 

At the age of one hundred and twenty years, and with- 
out ever entering the Promised Land, Moses died, and 
Jehovah chose a man by the name of Joshua to take his 
place. Joshua was the greatest military genius that his- 
tory or legend records. With Jehovah's help he waded 
through blood and slaughter into the Promised Land. 
"As I was with Moses," said Jehovah to Joshua, "so I 
will be with thee." 

The River Jordan lay between the Israelites and a" city 
called Jericho, which was strongly fortified by the heathen 
that lived there. Joshua and his army had no boats, and 
there was no bridge across the stream; so Jehovah worked 
the same magic on the River Jordan that he did on the 
Red Sea; he caused the waters to stand up in a heap on 
their ends (Joshua iii, verses 13 to 17), and General 
Joshua, mounted on a blooded burro, led his valiant hosts 
of Hebrews across, and up to the walls of Jericho. At 
the head of the procession marched a company of priests 
bearing the ark, as the box was called, inside of which, 
cuddled up in a corner, was the great Jehovah himself. 

[At the gates of the heathen city Joshua met an armed 
angel, who was an officer in one of Jehovah's celestial 



112 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

regiments (Joshua, v, verses 13-14). Then Jehovah 
tore down the walls of Jericho so that Joshua and his 
army could walk in. 

The process was very simple. Seven priests marched 
around the town seven times, blowing trumpets made of 
rams' horns. They carried with them the box contain- 
ing Jehovah. It took a week to complete the enchant- 
ment. Then all the Israelites, as commanded by General 
Joshua, let off a terrific yell, and the walls of the city 
fell down. In marched the conquering army, and Je- 
hovah ordered Joshua to immediately slaughter every 
man, woman and child, except a woman that kept a house 
in the tenderloin, by the name of Rahab. She, together 
with the inmates of her house, Jehovah spared. He did 
this because the woman had turned traitor to her own 
people and aided some Hebrew spies. Jehovah also had 
Joshua kill all the cattle. This was to make the victory 
still more bloody. Then he had the city burned to the 
ground. All this is found divinely recorded in the sixth 
chapter of Joshua. 

No sooner, however, had the Israelites began rejoicing 
over their great victory, than a man among them by the 
name of Achan did something or other that made Jeho- 
vah again lose his temper. What the character of the sin 
was is not made clear. Maybe he was whistling a tune, 
of making some sort of a racket, near the box that con- 
tained Jehovah. Or maybe he was flirting with a heathen 
girl. Anyhow, Jehovah had some heathen in the neigh- 
borhood kill a number of Israelites on account of it. The 
trouble was finally settled by Jehovah having the culprit. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 113 

together with his wife and children, stoned to death. 
Then Jehovah turned "from the fierceness of his anger," 
and once more quieted down in his box. A full account 
of this can be found in the divinely inspired seventh chap- 
ter of Joshua. 

Shortly after this General Joshua led his army against 
two more heathen cities, Ai and Bethel. With Jeho- 
vah's help he had no trouble killing all the inhabitants, 
the women and babies included. This time Jehovah let 
the Israelites keep the cattle for themselves. He had 
General Joshua hang the heathen king of Ai on a tree 
for resisting his chosen people. In honor of this victory 
General Joshua built a stone altar and offered up some 
choice mutton to Jehovah. 

One tribe of heathen, called Gibeonites, surrendered to 
General Joshua without putting up any fight. For this 
Jehovah rewarded them by not having them all slaught- 
ered. He merely doomed them and their children to chat- 
tel slavery. This is another remarkable instance of Je- 
hovah's mercy. An account of it is found in the ninth 
chapter of Joshua. In the tenth chapter of this di- 
vinely inspired record we are told that the kings of five 
heathen tribes combined to resist General Joshua. With 
Jehovah's help Joshua killed all the men, women and chil- 
dren of the five tribes. He hung the five kings on five 
trees. Joshua did all this in one day. It was the long- 
est day on record. It was twice as long as an ordinary 
day, for, we are told in the divinely inspired account of 
the battle (Joshua, x), that, when along late in the after- 
noon Joshua saw that he would be unable to complete the 



114 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

slaughter before dark, he ran to the box that Jehovah 
was in and persuaded Jehovah to make the sun stand still 
till he got through. '^So/' declares the thirteenth verse 
of this chapter, "the sun stood still in the midst of 
Heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day." 
In those days, be it remembered, the earth was flat, and 
floated on the ocean, and the sun and moon and all the 
stars went around it every twenty-four hours. 

From that on it was one continuous story of brilliant 
victories for General Joshua. He slaughtered tribe after 
tribe and hung kings by the score. He ran across a rem- 
nant of the giants, that w^ere bred when the angels came 
to earth and married the daughters of men, that had 
somehow escaped drowning in the flood. This is found 
in Joshua xii, verse 4. How Jehovah missed killing them 
is explained in another chapter. He swore he would 
drown the last of them, and he thought he had. How- 
ever, they are gone now. A few of the species spared 
would have made an interesting study. 

Finally the children of Israel conquered the Promised 
Land and took possession. They landed there rich in 
cattle and gold and silver that they had taken from the 
natives. General Joshua divided the spoils among the 
people, and, at the age of one hundred and ten, with his 
sword by his side and decorated with gold medals, this 
wonderful warrior of Jehovah's died. 

By this time a multitude of other gods, besides Jeho- 
vah, had sprung into existence. Two of these gods, says 
the second chapter of the divinely inspired book of Judges, 
were Baal and Ashtaroth. These gods offered such in- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 115 

ducements that the children of Israel deserted Jehovah 
for them. 

It was a case of economic determinism. Baal and Ash- 
tarotli did not require such vast quantities of veal and 
mutton offered to them, to keep them in good humor, as 
did the god Jehovah. This, however, is easily explained. 
The whole tribe of Levi, numbering about one-tenth of 
the Hebrew population, had been dedicated to the priest- 
hood by Jehovah, and every male Levite became an or- 
dained priest. This vast horde of priests received all the 
choice cuts of the animals sacrificed to Jehovah, and they 
were all good livers, and raised large families. This 
necessitated a great number of offerings — especially of 
"firstborn lambs, without spot or blemish." It kept the 
rest of the Jews poor and hungry dividing up their best 
meat with the priests. 

Baal and Ashtaroth had a comparatively small number 
of priests, and therefore only a few animals were sacri- 
ficed to them ; and so the Jews naturally took to the cheap- 
est gods on the market. Of course this made the jealous 
Jehovah angry, and he punished the Jews by letting their 
enemies overcome them, selling them into slavery, and 
other like punishments, as told in the second and third 
chapters of Judges. 

In this way Jehovah brought them back again to his 
fold. 

There were so many heathen around about them, who 
objected to having their lands and personal property taken 
away at Jehovah's command, that the children of Israel 
were at war continually. One particular tribe of heathen 



116 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

— the Philistines — was especially hard to overcome. In 
spite of all Jehovah could do the Jews could neither kill 
them off, nor make them vacate their property. 

There was at this time an Israelite by the name of 
Manoah, who had a wife that had borne him no children. 
Jehovah selected one of his best looking male angels, and 
told him to go down to earth and get acquainted 
with the woman ; and the angel did as Jehovah command- 
ed. Dressed in his best snowy-white suit, with a guitar 
in his hand and a gold hat on his head, the angel found 
the woman sitting alone on the grass in a secluded spot, 
listening to the brook that babbled by, and the birds sing- 
ing in the trees. 

"Her husband,'' states the thirteenth chapter and ninth 
verse of the divinely inspired Book of Judges, "was not 
with her." 

Suddenly, above the warble of tlie birds, trilled the 
soft, seductive strains of the angelic guitar, strung with 
catgut, such as only heaven-bred cats possess. The angel 
played the serenades suited for the occasion. He played 
till the sun went down behind the western hills, and the 
twinkling stars came out, and the silvery moon floated 
among the shadowy clouds. And then he came and sat 
beside Manoah's childless wife, and, like the celestials that 
appeared once unto Sarah, told her, before he left, that 
she would become a mother, and that her child would be 
the greatest physical wonder ever born. And in due time 
it all came to pass, and the woman gave birth to a lx)y, 
and called him Samson. 

For size and strength Samson, when he grew to man- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 117 

hood, beat any human being Jehovah had ever produced 
on earth, and his hide was so tough that no Philistine 
could stick a spear into it. He could pick up a lion and 
tear him to pieces with his left hand. One day he went 
to a town called Ashkelon and killed thirty men with one 
blow of his fist. He ran down a pack of three hundred 
foxes, gathered them all in his arms and tied their tails 
together in pairs. He then fastened firebrands between 
each pair of the foxes' tails and turned them loose. They 
ran into a cornfield owned by a Philistine farmer and 
burned up the whole crop. For revenge a mob of Phil- 
istines, numbering seven hundred, caught Samson's wife 
and father-in-law and burned them at the stake. Sam- 
son chased the mob and caught them, and choked them 
all to death. Then the Philistines gathered a thousand 
of their strongest men and went after Samson. Samson 
killed them all with the jawbone of an ass. When he 
got through with the job Samson was so thirsty that he 
thought he was going to die. Jehovah, who was stand- 
^^S by, scooped a hole in the donkey's jawbone, that Sam- 
son still held in his hand, and caused a spring of cold 
water to gush forth. 

One day Samson went to a city called Gaza, and wan- 
dered into the red-light district. It was a walled city, 
and the only way to get in or out was through a pair of 
massive brass gates. When the police learned that Sam- 
son was in town they locked the gates and vowed they 
would catch him in the morning. Samson, however, 
awoke at midnight, and concluded to start for home. 
When he came to the locked gates he pulled them up, to- 



118 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

'gether with the granite posts to which they were hinged, 
and carried them to the top of a mountain. The gates 
weighed about four thousand pounds each. 

It was Samson's love for the ladies that brought him 
to an untimely end. A Philistine woman of easy virtue, 
by the name of Delilah, induced Samson to tell her the 
cause of his marvelous strength. It all lay in his hair. 
The woman luUabyed Samson to sleep and had a barber 
trim his locks. When Samson awoke he was as weak 
as a child. The Philistines bound him with fetters of 
brass, gouged out his eyes, and put him in prison. 

Then they concluded that Samson would make a fine 
sacrifice to offer to their god, Dagon. So they held a 
prayer meeting at Dagon's temple and brought Samson 
there. The place was crowded with worshipers. At the 
proper time a boy, who was in charge oi the weak, blind, 
and bound ex-champion of Israel, was told to bring the 
captive to a platform and make him dance to amuse the 
congregation. On the way Samson induced the boy to 
let him rest a moment against one of the stone pillars of 
the temple. Unknown to the boy, Jehovah was hiding 
behind the pillar. Samson whispered a word in Jeho- 
vah's ear. The result was that Samson tumbled down 
the immense stone structure on the heads of the people. 
The whole congregation, numbering several thousand, to- 
gether with Samson himself, were crushed to death. Only 
Jehovah escaped unhurt. 

These facts regarding Samson's career are found in the 
inspired book of Judges, chapters xiii to xvi, inclusive. 



CHAFFER VII. 

I 

/^ NE of the most remarkable episodes in the adveri- 
^^ tures of Jehovah, as recorded in the inspired fourth 
chapter of the first book of Samuel, was when the Philis- 
tines stole him. It was at a time when the Israelites and 
Philistines were at war, and the Israelites, during a bat- 
tle, carried the ark containing Jehovah to the front ranks 
of the fray. In spite of this precaution, however, the 
Philistines won the day, and, among the spoils, seized the 
ark, and brought it, with Jehovah inside, to their own 
church, and placed it in front of the Philistine god, called 
Damon, who was made of stone. When the stone god 
Damon saw the wooden box containing the god Jeho- 
vah he fell flat on his face. The Philistines set Damon 
up again, and Damon's hands and head dropped off — he 
had no legs — and nothing was left but his stump. Upon 
this the Philistines became afraid of the ark of Jeho- 
vah and removed it to a town called Gath. Jehovah im- 
mediately afflicted all the men of Gath with emerods 
(piles). Then the Philistines removed the ark to a place 
called Ekron. The natives, however, loudly protested 
against locating Jehovah in their vicinity, as they felt 
sure the God of Israel would plague them. He did. He 
plagued a large number to death, sent emerods on the 
rest, and overran the place with mice. By this time the 
Philistines realized they had an elephant on their hands. 
They called all their priests and magicians together, and,, 



120 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

after due deliberation, the priests and magicians ordered 
the Philistines to first make golden images of both the 
mice and the emerods; then to construct a cart, and to 
hitch two milch cows to it ; then load the ark on the cart, 
and place the gold images of mice and emerods beside the 
ark, and turn the outfit loose. 

It worked fine. Jehovah, from inside the box, charmed 
the cows, and they went straight to a place called Beth- 
shemesh, where some of Jehovah's priests were located. 
The priests of Jehovah received the ark with great re- 
joicings and had some young goats sacrificed to Jeho- 
vah. The gold images they put in their pockets, and the 
Philistines were not troubled with mice and piles any 
longer. 

Then, we are told, a terrible tragedy took place. A 
number of Bethshemites, through curiosity, peeped into 
the little hole in the ark to see if Jehovah had stood the 
trip all right. This so angered Jehovah that he slew fifty 
thousand with one stroke of his magic. Finally an in- 
habitant of a place called Kirjathjearim, a Hebrew farm- 
er by the name of Abinadab, who lived in seclusion on 
the top of a hill, got possession of Jehovah and his ark 
and hid it in his cabin. Abinadab had a son by the name 
of Eleazar, whom he first sanctified, and then put him 
in charge of the ark. There Jehovah remained for twen- 
ty years, during which time the Israelites could find no 
trace of him. The result was that the Philistines raided 
the Israelites and devoured their flocks whenever they 
took a notion to do so. 

There was a man of Israel at that time by the name 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 121 

of Samuel, who was a mighty magician, and, in the days 
before the Philistines stole him, an intimate friend of 
Jehovah's. Samuel was raised by a priest named Eli, 
who had two sons that were killed by Jehovah for not 
offering him sacrifices in the proper manner. Eli and 
Samuel lived in the church building where Jehovah and 
his ark were kept, and, when a child, Samuel slept in 
a cot placed beside the ark. One night Jehovah awoke 
Samuel t^y whispering in his ear. Samuel first thought it 
was Eli, who slept over in the nuns' apartment, and he 
ran over to Eli's bed and asked him what he wanted. Eli 
told Samuel he must have been dreaming, that he had 
not called him, and told him to go back to his cot and 
go to sleep. But no sooner had Samuel crept into his 
cot than he heard the voice again calling him by name, 
so once more he went and told Eli. This happened three 
times in the night; and then Eli knew it was Jehovah 
that was doing the talking through the hole in. his box, 
and that Samuel had been divinely chosen to be a great 
soothsayer. 

So, when Samuel grew up, tormented as they were by 
the Philistines and not knowing where in the world their 
god was, the Israelites, who had been worshiping a god 
by the name of Ashtaroth during Jehovah's absence, 
looked to Samuel to help them out. This was just what 
Samuel had been waiting for. He butchered a sucking 
lamb, and after laying aside the choice cuts for himself, 
offered the rest to Jehovah. 

In the second chapter, verses 13 and 14, of the divinely 
inspired record of First Samuel, explicit directions ar^ 



122 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

given as to how much meat the priest should take when 
an animal was offered to Jehovah. It reads: ''When 
any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant came, while 
the flesh was in seething, with a fleshhook of three teeth 
in his hand; and he stuck it into the pan, or kettle, or 
caldron, or pot: all that the fleshhook brought up the 
priest took for himself." 

As soon as Samuel had offered up the lamb the for- 
tunes of the Israelites changed for the better. They went 
to battle with the Philistines and defeated them and drove 
them out of the coimtry. Jehovah had Eleazar bring the 
ark from the cabin on the hilltop, and Eleazar was made 
a high priest. Samuel served as Jehovah's judge over 
Israel and held the job till he became so old he could not 
attend to it; then he turned it over to two of his sons, 
whose names were Joel and Abiah. 

But these sons of Samuel were not popular with the 
Israelites, and they demanded a king to rule over them. 
So Samuel went to Jehovah's box and talked the matter 
over with him. 

Jehovah told Samuel how a king, once in power, would 
despoil the people. But the people insisted on trying a 
king — said he couldn't make matters any worse than they 
had been under Jehovah and his priests ; and finally Jeho- 
vah consented to let them have one, and ordered Samuel 
to bring forth a man by the name of Saul, rub oil in his 
hair and whiskers, and kiss him and proclaim him Saul 
the First, King of Israel. 

This done, Saul immediately began to array himself in 
royal style. He raised an army, surrounded himself with 



LIFE. OF JEHOVAH 123 

servants, filled his cellars with meat and wine, and started 
a harem. In fact, so far as his limited means allowed, he 
acted just like divinely ordained kings do today. 

But Saul did not make the sort of a ruler that suited 
Jehovah. As a warrior he w^as a failure, which alone 
was enough to discredit him. 

There was a young Israelite, a sheepherder, by the name 
of David, that took Jehovah's fancy. One day David 
split the skull of one of the escaped giants, by the name 
of Goliath, with a slingshot. 

"That's the boy for me," said Jehovah. 

Saul soon became suspicious and tried to kill David: 
but David was under Jehovah's protection and escaped. 

Finally Saul died, and part of the Israelites, the tribe 
of Judah, made David their king. The rest of the Israel- 
ites made Ishbosheth, Saul's son, their king. This started 
a civil war. David and his tribe, however, having po3- 
session of the box with Jehovah inside, defeated and slew 
his enemies and was finally made King of Israel. 

Jehovah learned to like David above all the Israelites 
he had ever created. He was a man after Jehovah's own 
heart. He was not only a first-class soldier, but also the 
leading white-slaver of his day. Whenever King David 
saw a young woman that attracted him, he took her. He 
sanctified himself by offering more sacrifices than any- 
body had ever offered before. In these sacrifices King 
David not only used goats and sheep, but also, as pre- 
viously narrated, human beings. 

The theologians of today recognize David as one of 
the saintliest souls that ever lived. 



124 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Only once was Jehovah seriously displeased with him. 
That was when David, having become enamored of the 
wife of a man by the name of Uriah, who was well liked 
himself by Jehovah, saw no way to obtain peaceable pos- 
session of the woman but by having her husband killed. 
This he did. Jehovah did not think it was a square deal, 
and told David so. 

"Didn't I give thee thy master's house and thy mas- 
ter's wives (Jehovah had turned over to David all of 
Saul's wives) into thy bosom, and wouldn't I have given 
thee as many more women as you could ask for," said 
Jehovah (Second Samuel, xii, verse 8), *^and now I pro- 
pose to punish you/^ 

And he did! As an act of divine justice it stands in 
a class all by itself. The punishment inflicted on David 
has no parallel in the court records of the world. It all 
fell on the innocent women that this holy king had dragged 
into his harem. You can read it in the twelfth cliapter 
of Second Samuel, verse eleven. The followers of the 
god Jehovah, that make our laws, have forbidden lan- 
guage such as therein contained, to pass through the 
mails. It is considered too immoral to be printed, except 
in the "Word of God." 

Outside of his fighting qualities, his offering up of 
human sacrifices and his lust for women, there is nothing 
remarkably religious recorded of David. A collection of 
psalms — some beautiful, and others brutal in expression 
— have been accredited to him. These, assert present- 
day scholars, are found by research to have been writ- 
ten by poets in the days of the Maccabees. David did 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 125 

not write them. His literary attainments were probably 
about the same as Sitting Bull's. 

One more episode in King David's reign is worthy of 
passing notice. It is recorded in the last chapter of Sec- 
ond Samuel. Jehovah ordered David to take a census of 
the Israelites. This, to the best of his ability, David did. 
Jehovah glanced over the report, and for some reason it 
made him angry. He evidently concluded the Israelites 
were becoming too numerous, for, we are told, he killed 
seventy thousand of them. 

David lived to be an old man "stricken in years." He 
became a physical wreck. His fast life had completely 
sapped his blood. No matter how many furs and blank- 
ets were piled on him, he nearly froze to death; and it 
was a hot climate at that. An interesting account of 
how the doctors tried to warm his body is narrated in the 
first chapter of the divinely inspired First Book of Kings. 
This, also, is considered unprintable. 

When David discovered that his days were fast draw- 
ing to a close, he had a priest anoint his son Solomon as 
his lawful heir. 

The reign of this man of God is one of the most spec- 
tacular in royal history. He far surpassed his father 
David in all that makes a divinely ordained king great 
and good and glorious. He built an immense and mag- 
nificent palace, selected seven hundred lawful wives, and 
besides kept an assortment of three hundred affinities. 
Among all the high-rollers that we have any record of 
Solomon holds the belt. 



126 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

He is credited with writing a song about a colored 
maiden that he went crazy over after having tired of his 
other loves. Solomon was somewhat along in years at 
the time this divinely inspired ditty was composed, but 
was apparently as gay a^ ever. He w^as a fine specimen 
of the human animal to keep up the gait he went. 

He was the champion booze-fighter of the period, and 
would doubtless have smoked cigarettes had the habit 
been known. 

Everyone that has tried to imitate him has ended in 
the penitentiary or an early grave. 

Jehovah never poured such blessings on another mor- 
tal. 

His pious admirers may simply marvel at the great rec- 
ord of this ancient saint and let it go at that. Nobody 
can take it away from him. One night of howling orgies 
like Solomon used to carry on in his harem is enough to 
land any common mortal in the morgue. 

Within the temple of Jehovah that Solomon built in 
Jerusalem was a dark room, and in this room Solomon 
placed the box that contained Jehovah; *'for/' said Solo- 
mon, speaking to Jehovah as he carried him there, "you 
said you would dwell in the thick darkness ; I have surely 
built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee 
to abide in forever (First King3, viii, verses 12-13)." 

But Solomon missed his reckoning. Years afterward 
hordes of heathen destroyed the temple. Jehovah, how- 
ever, escaped with his box. Both he and the box, says 
the divinely inspired eleventh chapter of Revelations, 
verse 19, are now at home in Heaven. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 127 

An immense altar was erected in the court of Solo- 
mon's temple, where cattle were roasted daily to satisfy 
Jehovah and feed the army of priests. 

Jerusalem in those days must have smelled like a coun- 
try barbecue, or a boarding-house kitchen at meal time. 

Jehovah thought so much of Solomon, we are told, 
that he made him the wisest man that ever lived. In 
proof of this a collection of proverbs, declared to have 
been written by Solomon, are found in the divinely in- 
spired records. 

That most of these proverbs are found in ancient Egyp- 
tian and Persian literature does not in the least discon- 
cert the theologians. 

The old rabbinical writings, that later theologians omit- 
ted from the divinely inspired scriptures, inform us, as 
before stated, that Solomon owned a large number of 
Jinns, half devil and half human, that served him in the 
palace. 

Perhaps these old rabbinical writings were blue-penciled 
by the learned theologians for fear they might strain the 
faith of Jehovah's later followers. What chances we are 
taking on account of their being omitted from the scrip- 
tures is hard to tell. We may all lose our souls by not 
devoutly reading and believing them. 

The account these writings give of the Queen (A 
Sheba's visit to King Solomon is quite interestitng. It 
is described in Dr. G. Weil's ''Bible Legends," published 
at Frankfurt, Gefmany, in 1845; ^t is also told in the 
works of Abou-djafar Tabari, and in Baring-Gould's "Le- 
gends of the Patriarchs," and bears the same evidence of 



128 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

having been originally divinely inspired by Jehovah as^ 
does our present authorized version of his holy word. 

The story runs as follows : 

Balkis (which was the name of the Queen of Sheba) 
hastened to prepare for her journey, and marched to King 
Solomon at the head of her twelve thousand generals, 
and all the armies they commanded. When she was a 
league from Solomon, the king had a happy thought. He 
called to him a Jinn, and bade him transport immediately 
from Sheba the throne of the Queen, and set it beside his 
own. The Jinn replied he would bring it before noon; 
but the king could not wait, for the queen would soon be 
there; then Asaph, the high priest, said, ^'Raise thine eyes^^ 
sire, to heaven, and before thou canst lower them the 
throne of Queen Balkis will be here." Asaph knew the 
mysterious word that would charm Jehovah to perform 
the miracle. Solomon solemnly gazed skyward and when 
he opened his eyes and looked down, behold by his side 
was Queen Balkis' throne. 

As soon as Balkis appeared, Solomon asked her if she 
recognized the seat. 

"I do," said Balkis, "it is mine, if it is that which it 
was." 

The cuteness of this reply, we are told, pleased Solo- 
mon. 

Now the Jinns were jealous of Queen Balkis, and they 
sought to turn the heart of Solomon av/ay from her; so 
they told him that she had hairy legs. 

Solomon, accordingly, was particularly curious to in- 
spect her legs, and his divine wisdom devised a cunning 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 129 

plan whereby he might do so. He directed the Jinns to 
lay down in front of the throne a pavement of crystal 
one hundred cubits square. Upon this pavement he or- 
dered them to pour water, so that it might appear to be 
a pond. 

When Queen Balkis, coming to visit Solomon, ap- 
proached the crystal covered with water, she naturally 
raised her petticoats, lest they should become wet in pass- 
ing through what she supposed to be water of consider-? 
able depth. A few steps, however, convinced her that 
there was not enough water to more than dampen her 
feet, so she dropped her petticoats; but not before Solo- 
mon had seen that the Jinns had lied about her legs. 

(Hosiery, and other lingerie, in those days had not 
come into vogue). 

The only blemish that King Solomon discovered on the 
Queen of Sheba's legs was three goat's hairs; these he 
removed, declare the rabbis, by a composition of arsenic 
and lime. 

Solomon discovered that Queen Balkis was one of the 
most beautiful women he had ever met, and, as was his 
custom in such cases, made love to her. The result was 
that when she went home to Sheba she gave birth to a 
son, who is the reputed ancestor of the kings of Abyssinia. 

Furthermore, Solomon converted the queen to Jeho- 
vah's religion and thereby saved her soul. 

An incident told in the Koran — which is based on the 
ancient rabbinical writings — discloses what a religious 
man Solomon was. He was very fond of horses, and one 
day, while inspecting a large number of these noble ani- 



130 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

mals, he became so interested that the hour of prayer 
passed without his saying his prayers. This called for 
an immediate and extraordinary sacrifice to Jehovah. He 
therefore had all the horses he had been inspecting, nine 
hundred in number, brought before him, and he cut all 
their throats. 

In the days of Solomon there lived in a valley near 
Jerusalem a band of apes, an historic account of whom 
appeared originally in the divinely inspired records 
(Weil's Bible Legends, pages 267-9). The ancestors of 
these apes were Israelites, who had been transformed into 
apes by Jehovah as a punishment for not keeping the 
Sabbath. 

One day Solomon, who knew nothing of the existence 
of these apes, passed through the valley at the head of 
his army. He was out to kill, and so, discovering the 
apes, he charged upon them. Thereupon three of the 
apes, carrying a flag of truce, approached Solomon and 
requested an interview. This being granted, they told 
Solomon the story of their ancestry. Solomon believed 
them, and had compassion on them, and gave them a 
letter on parchment assuring them undisturbed posses- 
sion of the valley. 

Years after Solomon's death a band of Bedouins came 
into the valley and, discovering the apes, concluded to 
drive them away and occupy the valley themselves. 
"Thereupon," to quote Baring-Gould, in his "Legends of 
the Patriarchs," page 423, "an aged ape came before them 
bearing a parchment letter. This they were unable to 
read; so they sent it to the Caliph Omar, who was also 



LIFEOF JEHOVAH 131 

unable to decipher the writing; but a Jew at his court 
read it, and it was an assurance given to the apes against 
invasion by King Solomon. Thereupon Omar sent orders 
that they were to be left unmolested, and returned to 
them their parchment/' 

Another convincing evidence that these apes were de- 
scended from the followers of Jehovah, as witnessed by 
the Bedouins, was the act of a number of male apes sto^ 
ning to death a female ape on the charge of adultery. 

What finally became of the descendants of these apes 
no divinely inspired record, that can be found, discloses. 
Possibly they are filling orthodox pulpits. This sugges- 
tion, however, has no divinely inspired foundation. It 
is merely a venture of the writer's. 

In the divinely inspired book of Job mention is made 
of the Leviathan, the mammoth of the sea. The ancient 
rabbis fully describe the creature, as he was once seen 
by Solomon. He was the biggest animal Jehovah had 
made when at work those six days creating the universe 
out of nothing. 

It seems, we are told, that Solomon gave feasts to 
which were invited all the creatures of earth and air. The 
female Jinns did the cooking, and the meats they cooked 
were placed on tables which covered an area of four 
square miles. It required several weeks to feed the vast 
assemblage, and every day thirty thousand heaping por- 
tions of beef, and as many of mutton, and like propor- 
tions of birds and fishes, were devoured. 

It was a great feast for the animals left alive, but rather 
hard on the ones that supplied the bill of fare. 



132 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

One day when the guests, consisting of men, beasts 
and birds, arose satisfied from the tables, Solomon offered 
up thanks and besought Jehovah to permit him to feed 
to the full all the created beings at one sitting. Jeho- 
vah replied that this was impossible — more than Jeho- 
vah himself could accomplish. 

"But," said the God o^f Israel, ''try tomorrow what thou 
canst do to satisfy the dwellers of the sea.'' 

On the morrow, accordingly, Solomon had his Jinns 
load a hundred thousand camels and a hundred thousand 
asses with corn and lead them to the seashore. Solo^ 
mon, the reader will note, owned a well-stocked ranch. 
When the great procession of camels and asses were 
ranged along the shore, Solomon cried to the fishes, 
''Come, ye dwellers in the water, eat and be satisfied." 

All manner of fishes immediately swarmed the shore 
with mouths wideopen, and Solomon had his Jinns feed 
them until they were satisfied and dived out of sight. 
Then all at once a whale lifted his head above the surface, 
and it was as big as a mountain, Solomon had his Jinns 
pour sack after sack of corn down the whale's throat, 
until the last sack was gone. But the whale cried, "Feed 
me Solomion ! feed me ! never have I suffered from hunger 
as I have this day!" 

Solomon asked the whale if there were any more like 
him in the sea. 

"There are a thousand different tribes of my species," 
said the whale in fluent Hebrew, "and the smallest is so 
large that thou wouldst seem in its belly to be but a sand- 
grain in the desert" 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 133 

Solomon got down on his knees and wept, and prayed 
Jehovah to forgive him for what he had done. 

"My kingdom/' answered Jehovah, who had left his 
box in the temple and was standing by Solomon's side, 
''is greater than thine. Stand up, and behold one crea- 
ture over which no man has yet obtained the mastery." 
Solomon got up from his knees and looked upon the 
waters. The sea began to foam and toss, as though 
churned by inward tornadoes; and out of the tumbling 
brine rose the Leviathan, so great, we are told by the 
old rabbis who received their information direct from 
Jehovah, that it could easily have swallowed seven thou- 
sand whales like the one Solomon had attempted to feed. 
And then the Leviathan spoke with a voice like unto 
the roar of thunders, 'Traised be Jehovah, who pre- 
serves me from perishing with hunger." 

What manner of food Jehovah prepared for the Levia- 
than is not disclosed. Neither is there any inspired re- 
cord of anybody save Solomon ever having beheld the 
animal. Now and then modern sailors, canying a con- 
siderable quantity of grog, have reported seeing him 
somew^here in the South Seas, but their testimony is not 
considered trustworthy from a theological standpoint. 

Though Solomon vv^as very wise and very devout, yet 
he was not quite perfect; but Jehovah thought so much 
of him that he was always ready to forgive him, no 
matter what he did. The story of one of his sins is re- 
corded as follows: 

There was a beautiful maiden, a princess, named 
Djarada, who, according to the Arabian account, was 



134 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

the daughter of King Nubara, ruler of an island in the 
Indian Sea; but according to the old Jewish rabbis she 
was the daughter of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Anyway, 
Solomon had heard O'f her beauty, and desired her. Soi, 
after making his wish known to Jehovah, and receiving 
divine sanction, Solomon started with his valiant army 
to capture the royal prize. After several skirmishes he 
finally surrounded the palace where the princess dwelt, 
slew the king, her father, with his own hands, and took 
the orphan, whom he discovered to be more charming 
than was even the Queen of Sheba, back to Jerusalem 
with him. 

But, on account of her heathen training, Solomon did 
not look at all pleasing to her. She saw in him not a 
saint, but a monster, the murderer of her father, and she 
recoiled from his embrace with loathing, and spent her 
nights and days in tears. Solomon trusted that time 
would heal her wounds and reconcile her to her fate; but 
as after the expiration of a year her sorrow showed no 
sign of abating, he asked her if there was anything he 
could do to comfort her. A kindhearted man was Solo- 
mon. She replied that at her old home was a statue 
of her father, and that she longed to have it brought and 
placed in her chamber. Solomon, moved with compas- 
sion, sent a Jinn for the statue, and had it brought and 
set up in Djarada's apartment. Djarada immediately 
prostrated herself before it, and offered incense and wor- 
ship to the image. 

When Asaph, the high-priest, heard of this, he held 
services at the temple and preached a scathing sermon 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 135 

against Solomon. He told how good and pure had been 
all the holy men of God from Abraham to David, and 
how faithfully and religiously Solomon, up to the pres- 
tnt, had walked in their footsteps. 

"But now," spoke Asaph, "our king hath turned aside 
from Jehovah.'' 

As he said this Jehovah was heard to grunt an ap- 
proval from his box in the dark room. 

Then Solomon, who was occupying a front pew, arose 
and asked the high-priest to explain himself. The high- 
priest answered, "Thou hast suffered thy passions to 
blind thee, so that idolatry is practiced in thy palace." 

Solomon hastened to Djarada's apartments, and 
caught the heartbroken maid in prayer before the image 
of her dead father. In righteous rage at the sight of such 
heathenism Solomon cried, "We are the followers of 
Jehovah!" 

Then he broke the heathen statue to pieces and gave 
Djarada a terrible beating. 

According to Jehovah's holy injunctions he should 
have stoned her to death. 

After this Solomon went to his own rooms, dressed 
himself in garments woven and sewed by virgins, filled 
his hair and whiskers with ashes and grease, and 
wandered alone in the wilderness. There, after fasting 
and sobbing and saying his prayers for forty days, Jeho- 
vah slipped away from his box in the temple and came 
to Solomon and forgave him for bringing to the heathen 
Djarada the image of her heathen father, that she might 
worship it. 



136 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Solomon did not live to be very old. He was only 
fifty-five when he died. What ailed him the inspired 
records do not state. Probably a complication of gout, 
delirium tremens, and early decay. Anyway he was too 
good for earth, and Jehovah gathered him in. He is 
now in Heaven. Djarada and her father are in Hell. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

T^ ATING from the time of Solomon Jehovah's or- 
^^ dained magicians and miracle workers became 
plentiful among his chosen people. With their jugglery 
and incantations they overturned all the laws of nature 
at will. As Robert Burns has inscribed : 
"Wi' hocus pocus rod in hand, 
Like Mother Goose's magic wand, 
They could the elements command. 

As legends run — 
Divide the sea, or bum the land, 
Or stop the sun." 
A prominent character among these miracle workers 
was a magician by the name of Elijah. At this period 
the Israelites had again deserted Jehovah, and were fol- 
lowing after the heathen god Baal. Some rabbinical 
writers claim that Baal was a female deity and very 
beautiful. 

In order to bring the people back to the orthodox fold 
Elijah prayed to Jehovah to cause a drouth and famine 
to consume the land; the idea being to starve the back- 
sliders to repentance. So Jehovah started the drouth and 
famine, and Elijah took his abode in a cave near a small 
creek. There he neither had to worry or work. The 
brook furnished him drink, and Jehovah induced a flock 
of crows to bring him his meals every day. 

At this period Jehovah spent very little of his time in 



138 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

his box in the temple. He was only there during regular 
religious services. Most of the time he was either on 
his throne in Heaven, or else visiting with Elijah. 

Finally the brook went dry, and as Jehovah was short 
of water he was unable to fill it again; so he moved 
Elijah to the home of a poor widow, who, with her only 
son, like many more on account of the famine, were on 
the verge of starvation. From the moment of Elijah's 
arrival, however, the widow's larder never failed. Jeho- 
vah miraculously filled her meal barrel and oil cruse as 
fast as the contents were devoured. 

One day the widow's boy was taken suddenly sick and 
died. With Jehovah's help Elijah had no trouble bring- 
ing him to life again. 

Another sorcery of Elijah's was his handy method of 
starting a fire. All he had to do was to gather some 
fuel and say his prayers. Jehovah then blew sparks 
from his nostrils on the kindling and immediately it 
blazed into a flame. 

Once, in order to show his power to the heathen magi- 
cians, Elijah made a stone altar and set it in a trench 
filled with water; then he butchered a steer and laid the 
carcass on the altar ; then he said his prayers, and, behold, 
the sparks from Jehovah's nose flew there and consumed 
the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and all the dirt and 
water in the trench. After that Elijah caught the heathen 
magicians, numbering four hundred and fifty, and killed 
them. 

This put Elijah in good humor, so he asked Jehovah 
to end the drouth, and that night it rained. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 139 

All this and more is told in the eighteenth chapter 
of the divinely inspired First Book of Kings. 

One day an officer with a company of fifty men, fol- 
lowers of the god Baal, went after Elijah to arrest him. 
Elijah climbed on top of a steep hill and awaited their 
coming; then he had Jehovah blow fire from his nose on 
the whole company and burn them to ashes. 

The heathen authorities, hearing of this, sent fifty 
more men after Elijah. Jehovah piled them all in a 
heap and set fire to these, as he had to the others. 

And then fifty more daring fellows tried to seize Elijah. 
These, too, w^ere burned to a crisp by Jehovah. 

That ended all efforts to capture Elijah. (Second 
Kings, Chapter i, verses 9-12.) 

Soon after this Jehovah sent his own private coach, 
built of fire and hitched to horses of the same material, 
with an angel handling the reins, and Elijah was driven 
up to Heaven. 

As he left the earth Elijah pulled off his cloak and 
threw it to a companion of his by the name of Elisha, 
who was standing by. The garment was charmed by 
Jehovah and no sooner had Elisha put it on than he found 
himself possessed of all the miraculous powers of the 
departed Elijah. 

(Many orthodox Jews to this day assert that Elijah is 
not dead, but that he still lives in the flesh, and appears 
on earth at intervals. Accounts of his reappearances are 
told in the Talmud. This is the origin of the tales of the 
Wandering Jew.) 

One of the first acts that Elisha did with the charmed 



140 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

cloak was to establish his dignity. He was, it appears, a 
rather comical looking magician, with long tangled whis- 
kers, and a head as bald as marble. 

It seems that a number of children were playing in the 
neighborhood when his friend Elijah went to Heaven in 
the chariot of fire, and the sight of the performance 
amazed and delighted them. No wonder — it outclassed 
any show the world has ever witnessed. So when Elisha 
wandered away from the scene, wearing the cloak that 
Elijah had thrown to him, and which act the children had 
also observed, the whole band of youngsters followed 
Jehovah's newly-made magician, as they do today the 
clown in a circus parade. Excited, as they naturally must 
have been, by what they had seen, these youngsters w^ere 
eager for more such sights; so they cried to Elisha, *'Go 
up, Mr. Baldhead, go up in the air like the other man did.'' 

To thus make sport of such a sacred spectacle shocked 
and angered Elisha. He turned upon the children, and 
cursed them in the name of his god ; and Jehovah, we are 
told in the twenty-fourth verse of the divinely inspired 
second chapter of Second Kings, heard Elisha's curse, and 
sent two she bears out of the woods that tore to pieces 
forty-two of the little boys and girls. 

From that time on Elisha's reputation as a successful 
soothsayer and prestidigitator of the great Jehovah was 
securely established. 

He performed all manner of miracles. He made water 
flow in dry ditches, killed whole tribes of heathen, caused 
a senile old woman to bear a son, had the son die of sun- 
stroke, raised him to life again, made poison weeds good 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 141 

to eat, cured people of leprosy, caused men to go blind, 
stopped famines, and performed other wonders too nu- 
merous to mention. 

No chariot and horses of fire carried Elisha at last to 
Heaven. He simply took sick and died. 

Jehovah's next wonder-worker of any note mentioned 
in the divinely inspired records was a king of Judah named 
Hezekiah. In a war with the Assyrians this king was 
assisted by one of Jehovah's most powerful angels. This 
angel, we are told in the thirty-fifth verse of the nine- 
teenth chapter of Second Kings, smote to death one hun- 
dred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians. 

After this Hezekiah became desperately sick with a 
boil. He thought he w^as going to die. The prophet 
Isaiah came to see him, and told him to cheer up, that 
Jehovah would pull him through ; and to prove his words 
he induced Jehovah to give a sign. It was about sun- 
down, and Hezekiah's boil hurt worse at night than it 
did in the daytime, so Jehovah, in order to make him feel 
easier, moved the sun back ten degrees in the sky. 

The manner in which Jehovah used to move the sun 
around to please his fnagicians was marvelous. 

Hezekiah immediately began to improve, and the next 
day vvas able to sit up — or, more likely, to sit down. 

And yet with all these signs and wonders Jehovah was 
unable to hold the Israelites in line. They continually 
wandered after other gods, for which Jehovah afflicted 
them in divers ways: he had them slaughtered by the 
thousands, and what was left carried into captivity by the 
heathen. 



142 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

It is somewhat remarkable to note that whenever the 
Israehtes overcame a nation of heathens, that it was al- 
ways Jehovah that did it; but, whenever a powerful 
heathen nation overcame the Israelites, it was because of 
the latter's sins. The overwhelming numbers and better 
equipment of the heathen had nothing to do with it. 

A noted character and personal friend of Jehovah's 
that appeared in Israel was a prosperous cattleman and 
slave-owner by the name of Job. He was the father of a 
large family, and his flocks of cows and sheep and goats 
and camels and asses were beyond number ; and he wa»s so 
good that he never lost his patience, no matter what hap- 
pened to him. 

But alas ! his piety and patience brought upon Job such 
afflictions as no man, it would seem, could quietly and 
resignedly endure. 

The story runs that the sight of Job's perfect life got 
on the Devil's nerves; so, one day, when court was being 
held in Heaven, the Devil betook himself thither to pay 
his respects to Jehovah, and managed to obtain a front 
seat, close to the throne. Jehovah soon noticed the 
forked tail sticking out under the Devil's robes, and thus 
recognized him. 

''What are you doing here, and where did you come 
from ?" said Jehovah, addressing the Devil. 

"I came from going to and fro in the earth, and walk- 
ing up and down in it," answered the Devil. 

''Did you ever meet my friend Job?" asked Jehovah. 

"The rich cattleman surrounded by servants and every 
conceivable luxury?" replied the Devil. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH ,143 

^'That's the party/' said Jehovah. 

The Devil smiled. 

"No wonder he's a saint/' said he, ''with all the wealth 
he possesses. Take away everything he has, and Job will 
curse thee to thy face." 

Then, we are told, Jehovah said unto Satan, "Behold, 
all that Job hath do I put in thy power ; only do not kill 
him/' 

Thus empowered the Devil went back to earth and 
began to afflict Job. 

With Jehovah's help he nearly equalled the tortures of 
the Holy Inquisition. 

Let the divinely inspired record, as found in the Book 
of Job, tell the tale : 

"And there came a messenger unto Job, and said. The 
oxen were plowing, and the asses were feeding beside 
them; and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them 
aw^ay; yea, they have slain the servants (slaves) with the 
edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell 
thee." 

"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, 
and said. The fire of Jehovah is fallen from heaven, and 
hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed 
them; and I only am escaped to tell thee." 

"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, 
and said. The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell 
upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and 
slain the servants with the edge of the sword ; and I only 
am escaped alone to tell thee." 

"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, 



144 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

and said, Thy sons and daughters were eating and drink- 
ing wine in their eldest brother's house ; and, behold, there 
came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the 
four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, 
and they are dead ; and I only am escaped to tell thee." 

(The divinely inspired record makes no mention of 
Jehovah's slaughter of Job's daughters, together with his 
sons. This, however, is readily accounted for, as females, 
in the eyes of Jehovah, were of little value, and hardly 
worth noting.) 

These calamities, all happening in a few minutes, were 
enough to drive an ordinary person insane. Not so wath 
Job. He wasn't excited the least bit. He calmly arose 
from where he was sitting, took off his coat, and, to show 
his contempt for the calamities suddenly sent upon him, 
ripped it into rags; then he quietly shaved his head and 
said his prayers. 

''Jehovah gave, and Jehovah took it away," said Job; 
''blessed be Jehovah." 

But the Devil didn't give up his designs to make Job 
lose his temper. So he waited until court was being held 
again in Heaven, and appeared once more at Jehovah's 
throne. 

"What do you think now about my friend Job," asked 
Jehovah; "isn't -his patience and piety something to be 
proud of?" 

And the Devil answered : 

"Just put forth that hand of yours, Jehovah, and touch 
Job's flesh and bones, and he will curse thee to thy face." 

"All right," said Jehovah, "we'll try it out on him." 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 145 

And Jehovah reached down his hand and touched Job. 
The application took; and Job was immediately covered 
with boils from head to foot. There wasn't a square inch 
on his body that didn't contain a sore. The things burned 
and itched so tliat Job used a broken stone pot to scratch 
himself. The only place where he could sit or lie down 
with any comfort was on a heap of ashes. And yet his 
patience never left him, and his admiration for Jehovah 
(whom he realized was causing him all this misery) never 
grew less. And finally, after long suffering, his reward 
came. 

Such an example of holiness touched Jehovah's heart. 
He cured Job of his boils, sent him more children than 
he had before, and restored him double all the live stock 
and slaves he had lost. And so Job was made happier 
than ever in his life, and the joke was on the Devil. 

An account of Job's career that was long ago dropped 
out of the divinely inspired sacred scriptures, and which 
is told by the ancient Jewish rabbis, is even more explicit 
than the present sacred scriptures contain. Part of this 
can be found in the apocryphal "Testament of Job," that 
was formerly used in orthodox services. 

Job, say the rabbis, was the great grandson of Esau, 
and was one of the three great magicians to Pharaoh, 
king of Egypt; Jethro and Balaam being the other two. 
These magicians, by their enchantments, drew a line 
around the land of Egypt, over which no slave could pass. 
When a Hebrew slave, trying to make his escape, reached 
this magic line, a spell overtook him and he was suddenly 
gulled back to the brick kiln from which he had ran away. 



146 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

But Jehovah, with his plagues, finally worried these 
Egyptian magicians until they were so worn out and 
weak that they could not make their enchantments do the 
work ; and when at last they saw the Israelites break away 
and pass over the magic line. Job, Jethro and Balaam 
concluded to quit their Egyptian gods and follow after 
Jehovah. 

Job, who was the most powerful of the magicians, pos- 
sessed a stone image of the leading Egyptian god, which 
for years had been the source of his magic. This image 
Job determined to destroy. He knew Jehovah's temper, 
and that he would not allow his followers to have any 
other gods. 

But the stone image refused to be demolished. It 
threw Job into spasms whenever he approached with his 
hammer. Finally Jehovah, watching the proceedings, 
sent one of the stoutest angels in Paradise to help Job. 
With the angel's help the image of the heathen god was 
smashed to fragments. 

Now this heathen god was a personal friend of the 
Devil's, and it angered the Devil to see the image thus 
destroyed. So he made up his mind to get even with 
Job ; but, realizing what a powerful god Jehovah was, and 
knowing ihat Job had become one of his followers, the 
Devil bided his time. He knew he would need Jehovah's 
help to inflict his revenge on Job for destroying the image 
of the heathen god. This, as told in the Book of Job, 
he finally accomplished. With cunning diplomacy and 
flattery he induced Jehovah to become his partner in tor- 
menting poor Job. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 147 

According to the rabbis, the Devil, with the help of 
Jehovah, made still further effort to cause Job to lose 
his religion, when the boils failed to have the desired 
effect. The rabbinical account reads : 

Satan saw that he could not triumph so long as Job's 
wife remained faithful to him. She was a comfort in his 
afflictions, and he cared not for possessions, or children, 
or slaves, or even his health, so long as he had her. Her 
name, say the rabbis, was Rahma, while in the ''Testa- 
ment of Job" she is called Sitis. 

One day, as she was carrying food to Job, who, it will 
be recalled, sat on an ash-heap on account of his boils, 
Satan appeared before her in the form of an old man, 
and thus addressed her: 

"Oh Rahma! art thou not the daughter of Ephraim, 
the son of Joseph?'' 

She replied, "I am." 

Then said Satan, "In what condition do I see thee?" 

She answered, "My husband Job has fallen into dire 
poverty, and has no slaves, so I serve him." 

Satan said, "Do not serve him, for when thou touchest 
him the poison of his disease is liable to pass into thy 
veins." 

To which Rahma answered, "He is my husband, and 
I must wait on him as long as I live, in health or dis- 
ease." 

Thus failing to tempt the woman, but still not entirely 
discouraged, Satan walked off. 

Rahma told Job what had happened, and he, being a 
magician, said to her, "O woman! he whom you have 



148 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

seen is Satan and he desired to separate us. Do not speak 
to him again when he addresses you." 

Soon after Satan appeared to Rahma again in the form 
of a handsome youth, and said to her, ^'What woman art 
thou, w^ho art so radiant in beauty?" 

And Rahma answered, ''I am the wife of a poor man, 
named Job." 

Then said Satan, "O woman ! what hast thou, with thy 
wondrous beauty, to do with a forlorn, poverty-stricken, 
sick husband? Go, be divorced from thy husband, and 
marry me. I have great possessions, and I will treat thee 
as a queen." 

If Rahma had accepted the flattering offer there would 
doubtless have been another litter of half-devil, half-hu- 
mans, born on earth. But she didn't. She turned up her 
nose at the handsome youth, and went to the ash-heap, 
where her husband Job sat scratching himself with the 
stone pot. When she narrated the circumstance, Job 
again said: 

^'O woman! did I not tell thee to speak with him no 
more; why hast thou dared to disobey my command? 
That was Satan, once more trying to separate us. Never 
speak to him again." 

It was not long, however, before Satan, for the third 
time, presented himself to Job's wife. This time he ap- 
peared as one of Jehovah's angels. Jehovah had dressed 
him all in white for the occasion, and had furnished him 
with celestial wings, harp, and a gold crown. 

"O woman," said the Devil, ^'daughter of a prophet! 
I am an angel from Jehovah, with a message to thee." 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 149 

'*What message?'' inquired Rahma. 

* 'Behold Jehovah is wroth with Job, because he has neg- 
lected to offer thanks for all his blessings; thereupon 
hath Jehovah concluded to wipe his name off the heavenly 
register, and he shall go from bad to worse imtil he 
dies, and then go to the flames of Hell. All the angels 
of Heaven have been commanded to curse him, and thou, 
daughter of a prophet, must do the same, or thou shalt 
be eternally damned with him." 

When Rahma heard this threat she wept, and answered : 

"After so many afflictions, shall the name of Job be 
taken from the list of prophets ? And af t^r so many suf- 
ferings shall he perish everlastingly?" 

Then she hurried, w^eeping, to Job, and told him what 
she had heard. This time Job flew into a rage, and cried 
out, "Have I not warned thee these two times not to speak 
to this creature Satan, who appears in so many different 
forms? Wait till I get well, and I will give thee a hun- 
dred lashes with a rod." 

Another inspired rabbi (they were all inspired) tells 
the story in a somewhat different way. Satan appeared 
as a baker, and Rahma needed bread, but she did not have 
any money in the house. 

Then said the baker, "Thou hast locks of beautiful 
hair; cut off a bunch of thy hair and give it to me, and 
thou canst have the largest of my loaves." 

The poor w^oman was hungry, and she cut off three 
locks of her hair, and in return took the loaf of bread, 
with which she hastened to Job, that both might eat. But 
Job, hungry as he was, only raved at the woman and 



150 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

swore like a pirate when he heard the story, and learned 
what she had done; and, being better of his boils a few 
days later, so that he was able to leave the ash-heap, he 
flogged Rahma within an inch of her life. 

Thus, claim some of the rabbis, did Satan at last tri- 
umph by causing Job to use profane language, and also 
to flog an innocent woman. 

One biography of Job claims that he sat on a manure- 
pile, and not on an ash-heap, all the time he sufifered with 
boils, which was seven years. This account states that it 
was not only boils that afflicted Job these seven years, but 
that he was also in continual pain from worms (Testa- 
ment of Job). The worms that had devoured Job's in- 
sides, we are told, Jehovah turned into silk-worms; and 
the flies that had tormented his sores as he lay on the 
manure-pile, he turned into honey bees. 

When at last Job died, a troop of angels, singing and 
playing their harps, carried his soul to Paradise. 

Another of Jehovah's wonder-workers was a man by 
the name of Ezekiel. A remarkable feature about Ezekiel 
was the manner in which he received his education. He 
did not read or study books ; he simply ate them, in order 
to comprehend their contents. Jehovah wrote the books, 
and would bring them to Ezekiel, and tell him to open 
his mouth, and eat the roll of a book he had in his hand. 
As soon as Ezekiel had swallowed the last mouthful he 
knew all the contents. Wonderful visions floated across 
his brain, and he began to see strange sights. He saw 
animals with four faces like human beings, and with four 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 151 

wings like birds, and feet like a young cow's ; and "their 
appearance was like burning coals of fire/' 

He also saw wheels with eyes in their rings. These 
wheels chased the four- faced animals all over the earth. 

As soon as E^ekiel saw these animals and these wheels 
he was able to foretell the future. 

The history of this is found in the first three chapters 
of the divinely inspired Book of Ezekiel. In the fourth 
chapter of this book we are told that Jehovah fed Ezekiel 
on barley baked with manure, and allowed him to drink 
nothing stronger than water. 

Possibly a continuous diet of this kind might still pro- 
duce a prophet. 

This, however, is only a suggestion — it is not inspired. 

Ezekiel saw a great many different varieties of visions. 
There was not a day went by but some sort of angels 
surrounded him. Some of these angels were Jehovah's 
bookkeepers, keeping a record of the sins of the Israelites. 
In the eleventh verse of the ninth chapter of Ezekiel 
we are told that they carried inkhorns. When Jehovah 
footed up the amount of sins, he punished the people ac- 
cordingly. 

In the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel is found an 
account of a valley filled with dead men's bones, victims 
of Jehovah's wrath. Ezekiel went down to this valley 
and preached a sermon to the bones, and, so great was 
his magic, the bones gathered themselves together and 
stood up and listened to the sermon. 

At another time, as told in the thirty-ninth chapter of 
Ezekiel, beginning at the seventeenth verse, Jehovah had 



152 LIFEOFJEHOVAH 

Ezekiel preach a sermon to all the feathered fowls and 
wild beasts of the jungle. These creatures, so it reads, 
Ezekiel assembled together, and promised them a great 
feast of the flesh and blood of Israelites whom Jehovah 
was about to kill because of their sins. 

Another of Jehovah's wonder-workers was a Hebrew^ 
named Daniel. He lived when Jehovah's chosen people 
were captive slaves in Babylon. Daniel could charm 
ravenous lions, interpret dreams, and read strange words 
seen on the walls where drunken rioters were holding a 
midnight carousal. Daniel, like Ezekiel, also saw queer 
looking animals stalking about. 

One of his miracles was to make the king of Babylon 
imagine himself to be a bull, and go and live in the fields 
and eat grass for a number of years, during which time, 
we are told, his hair grew "like eagles' feathers, and his 
nails like birds' claws" (Daniel, iv, verse 33). 

Daniel had three friends, who were also magicians. 
Their names were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. 
They were fire-eaters. One day Nebuchadnezzar, King 
of Babylon, had them thrown into a furnace seven times 
hotter than usually heated to burn his victims alive. 
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were not harmed in 
the least by the flames (Book of Daniel, iii). 

Another of Jehovah's magicians was named Jonah. The 
most noteworthy event narrated of Jonah's career was a 
sea voyage he made inside of a whale. 

Jonah was the first submarine sailor on record. 

This whale, we are told, in the seventeenth verse of the 
first chapter of the divinely inspired Book of Jonah, had 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 153 

been specially constructed by Jehovah for passenger serv- 
ice. Doubtless the whale's insides contained a comfort- 
able cabin, and other necessary accommodations for 
travelers. Jonah stayed in the whale three days, at the 
end of which time Jehovah steered the whale safely into 
port. 

Jonah's landing was unique — the whale spewed him out 
bag and baggage. 

Jonah, under Jehovah's direction, then betook himself 
to a city called Ninevah, and as soon as he reached there 
he went through the streets pronouncing a curse to over- 
take the inhabitants in forty days. Having done this he 
went to the outskirts and sat down and waited to see the 
town utterly destroyed. As Jehovah had ordered him 
to do the cursing, and had promised to make good, Jonah 
had no doubt as to the outcome. 

But the people of Ninevah, hearing the curse, and be- 
ing acquainted with Jehovah's past record, immediately 
got together and proclaimed a fast, and dressed them- 
selves in sackcloth, and prostrated themselves in prayer. 
The king himself arose from his throne, took off his royal 
robes, and, getting into a scratchy gunnysack, went out 
and sat on an ash-heap. All his nobles did the same. No- 
body in Ninevah ate or drank anything. Neither did 
they allow their domestic animals to eat or drink. Thus 
did the town repent of its sins. 

At the sight of such humility, and htmger and thirst, 
and the people all itching and suffering from the coarse 
cloth scraping their skin, Jehovah, says the tenth verse of 
the third chapter of the Book of Jonah, changed his mind, 



154 LIFEOFJEHOVAH 

and did not burn down the houses and kill the inhabitants 
of Ninevah. 

This made Jonah sore. He had sat outside of the city 
for several days waiting to see Jehovah fulfill his threat 
and rain down fire and brimstone, and now to have the 
exhibition cancelled was too- much of a disappointment to 
endure. Besides, it injured Jonah's reputation as a for- 
tune-teller. 

At last his anger turned into grief, and he told Jehovah 
he wanted to die — he couldn't bear to meet any of his 
friends after having made such a fool of himself. 

Then Jehovah caused a gourd to suddenly grow up 
and completely cover Jonah, so that no one passing that 
way cofuld see him as he sat there shedding tears. This 
made Jonah feel better, and he ceased to weep. Then 
Jehovah created a worm, and the worm gnawed a hole in 
the gourd, and it immediately withered. 

This is about all that is remarkable to be found con- 
cerning the magician Jonah. 



CHAPTER IX. 

T? OR a period covering five or six centuries Jehovah, as 
•*■ far as can be ascertained, remained quietly and peace- 
ably on his throne in the skies. He neither performed any 
juggleries nor sent any plagues. Finally, however, he 
concluded to make one more supreme exhibition of him- 
self. He decided to have a sacrifice offered up to him 
worthy such a god as himself. The blood of bulls and 
goats, and even the blood of ordinary mortals, did not 
appeal to him any more. He had grown tired of such 
sacrifices as these. Nothing but the butchering of a god 
could now satisfy his wrath. 

Furthermore, this god must be of flesh and blood, or 
no sacrifice could be made. A spook could not be offered 
up. Therefore, the only thing to do, in order to have a 
deity offered up in sacrifice, was to beget such a deity of 
a human mother. This plan, declare the Christian theo- 
logians, was duly carried out. 

To accomplish his purpose Jehovah chose a young vir- 
gin, and visited her in the shape of a ghost. 

In fact, at this period it appears that Jehovah had con- 
verted himself into two gods — himself, and his Holy 
Ghost. 

Both these gods, however, claim the theologians, are 
one and the same god. 

The virgin chosen for Jehovah's purpose was named 



156 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Mary, and her mother's name was Ann. Some theologians 
have claimed that Mary was divinely conceived. At any 
rate, she was extraordinarily beautiful, for St. Danniani, 
who died in 1059, says that *'God himself, on account of 
the surpassing beauty of the Holy Virgin, fell desperately 
in love with her." And St. Danniani ought to know^ He 
was a Roman Catholic priest, and it was Roman Catholic 
priests, years after the birth and sacrifice of Jehovah's 
son, that compiled, decided upon, and virtually wrote the' 
New Testament. 

There is no reason, therefore, to think that St. Danniani 
was not as much inspired as any of them. 

Jehovah, according to this same authority, called a 
convention in Heaven and told the astonished angels of 
the proposed plan of salvation through the divine birth 
and sacrifice of Christ. The angel Gabriel was forthwith 
dispatched to Mary with a letter explaining the whole 
scheme, and to prove the truth of the story in the six- 
teenth century the holy monk Eiseling wandered around 
Germany with a pinion-feather plucked from one of Gab- 
riel's wings. 

What more evidence do you want to prove that the 
orthodox creeds are true? 

We are told that whoever kissed this feather was im- 
mune from the plague that used to sweep across Europe. 
Of course, these kisses were not gratuitous — the priests 
do not do business that way. To kiss this angelic feather 
money had to be paid to the monk Eiseling. 

This monk also carried a bag filled with hay from the 
manger in Bethlehem in which Christ was born. Who- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 157 

ever kissed this bag of hay — for so much per kiss — was 
also protected from disease. 

Great were the preparations made for the advent of 
Jehovah's son. In order to make his human side of royal 
blood, his descent, as told in the gospels of Matthew and 
Luke, came dqwn from King David, the man who was 
so holy that he used to offer human sacrifices to Jehovah. 

If the reader will carefully scrutinize the account given 
in these two gospels, he will note that Christ descended 
from David via two different lines — one through David's 
son Solomon, and the other through his son Nathan. 

This makes his birth even still more miraculous. 

Jehovah himself, as previously stated, picked out Ann 
to be the mother of the virgin by whom he proposed to 
beget his son. Ann was an elderly dame, who had never 
borne any children. 

She is known by some devout people as the grand- 
mother of God. 

Ann's husband's name was Joachim; and they both 
lamented the fact that they were childless. 

One day Jehovah sent an angel to Ann, who told her 
that she would give birth to a daughter, whose name 
should be called Mary, and who would be known as the 
Virgin of the Lord. Full directions regarding the man- 
ner in which this virgin should be brought up were given ; 
she was to be raised in the temple, under the care and 
instruction of the holy priests. 

The following description of the birth and childhood of 
the virgin destined to give birth to a god, who was to 
be specially created in order to be offered up in bloody 



158 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of his father, the God 
Jehovah, is taken from the ^'Gospel of Mary," one of the 
apocryphal books of the New Testament, that was at one 
time considered inspired. This gospel says: 

*'So Anna conceived, and brought forth a daughter,' 
and according to the angel's demand, did call her name 
Mary. 

"And when three years were expired, and the time of 
her weaning complete, they brought the Virgin to the 
temple of the Lord with offerings. 

"And there were about the temple, according to the 
fifteen Psalms of degrees, fifteen stairs to ascend. 

"For the temple being built in a mountain, the altar of 
burnt offering, which was without, could not be come 
near but by stairs. 

"The parents of the blessed Virgin and infant Mary 
put her upon one of these stairs. 

"But while they were putting off their clothes, in which 
they had traveled, and according to custom putting on 
some that were neat and clean, in the meantime the Vir- 
gin of the Lord in such a manner went up all the stairs 
one after another, without the help of any to lead or lift 
her, that any one would have judged from hence that she 
was of perfect age. 

"Thus the Lord did, in the infancy of his Virgin, work 
this extraordinary work, and evidenced by this miracle 
how great she was like to be hereafter. 

"But the parents having offered up their sacrifice, ac- 
cording to the custom of the law, and perfected their vow, 
left the Virgin with other virgins in the apartments of the 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 159 

temple, who were to be brought up there, and they re- 
turned home. 

'*But the Virgin of the Lord, as she advanced in years, 
increased also in perfections, and according to the say- 
ing of the Psalmist, her father and mother forsook her, 
but the Lord took care of her. 

'Tor she every day had the conversation of angels, and 
every day received visitors from God, which preserved 
her from all sorts of evil, and caused her to abound with 
all good things.'' 

According to this Gospel of Mary the angel Gabriel 
notified the Virgin, in due time, of what Jehovah was 
going to do with her, in these words : "While a Virgin, 
you shall conceive ; while a virgin, you shall bring forth ; 
and while a virgin shall give suck.'' 

If one will search the pages of heathen sacred scriptures, 
it will be found that this act of Jehovah's — that of having 
a child by a virgin — was really no novelty. Dozens of 
heathen gods had previously done the same thing. 

In the apocryphal gospel, the Protevangelion, we are 
told that an angel brought from heaven all the food that 
the Virgin Mary ate. This same gospel says : 

"And when she was twelve years of age, the priests 
met in council, and said. Behold, Mary is twelve years of 
age; what shall we do with her, for fear lest the holy 
place of the Lord our God should be defiled ?" 

It appears that the priests were afraid to trust them- 
selves with the beautiful Virgin that Jehovah was raising 
for himself. 

Then this gospel tells what was done: 



160 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

"Then replied the priests to Zacharias the high-priest, 
Do you stand at the altar of the Lord, and enter jnto the 
holy place, and make petitions concerning her, and what- 
soever the Lord shall manifest unto you, that do. 

"Then the high-priest entered into the Holy of Holies 
(in which was the ark, inside of which Jehovah, at cer- 
tain hours, betook himself), and taking away with him 
the breastplate of judgment made prayers concerning her. 

"And, behold, the angel of the Lord came to him, and 
said, Zacharias, Zacharias, Go forth and call together all 
the widowers among the people, and let every one of 
them bring his rod, and he by whom the Lord shall shew 
a sign shall be the husband of Mary." 

What need Mary had of a husband, and why Jehovah 
provided her with one, has always been a mystery to 
those who have only read the New Testament as it now 
stands. The apocryphal gospel of the Protevangelion ex- 
plains the matter — she needed him to protect her from 
the holy priests around the temple. 

The wisdom displayed by Jehovah in selecting this hus- 
band is also related in this gospel ; for we are told that he 
was an old man, and a widower, and that he did not w^ant 
the job. 

To further quote the Protevangelion : 

"And the criers went out through all Judea, and the 
trumpet of the Lord sounded, and all the people ran and 
met together. 

"Joseph also, throwing away his hatchet, went out to 
meet them; and when they (these widowers) were met, 
they went to the high-priest, taking every man his rod." 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 161 

(This rod was doubtless a walking-stick, such as car- 
ried by elderly people.) 

"After the high-priest had received their rods, he went 
into the temple to pray; and when he had finished his 
prayer, he took the rods, and went forth and distributed 
them, and there was no miracle attended them, but the 
last rod was taken by Joseph, and behold a dove proceeded 
out of the rod, and flew upon the head of Joseph." 

This settled the matter ; for the next verse says : "And 
the high-priest said, Joseph, Thou art the person chosen 
to take the Virgin of the Lord, to keep her for him/' 
' But, we are told, "Joseph refused, saying, I am an 
old man, and have children, but she is young, and I fear 
lest I should appear ridiculous in Israel. 

"Then the high-priest replied, Joseph, Fear the Lord 
thy God, and remember how God dealt with Dathan, 
Korah, and Abiram, how the earth opened and swallowed 
them up, because of their contradiction. 

"Now, therefore, Joseph, fear God, lest the like things 
should happen in your family. 

"Joseph then being afraid, took her unto his house, and 
Joseph said unto Mary, Behold, I have taken thee from 
the temple of the Lord, and now I will leave thee in my 
house; I must go to mind my trade of building. The 
Lord be with thee." 

And, according to the account, the Lord himself was 
with her. It was only the fear of Jehovah's wrath that 
made the old and senile Joseph marry her. 

That Jewish history does not contain any account of all 
these wonders going on in Jerusalem at that time, and 



162 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

that all the inspired gospels containing them were ar- 
ranged by Roman priests, who had never been in Judea, 
and who lived from one to four hundred years after it 
was all over, is only explained by those versed in the 
mysteries of theology.. 

In due time Jehovah's son, by Mary, was born; angels 
having explained to both Joseph and Mary the divine 
plan. 

The birth of the child was hailed by swarms of angels 
flying over Judea, singing and playing their harps. 

Of this spectacular event the Jewish writers of the 
period make no mention. 

There are two accounts of the birthplace of Jesus. One 
which is found in the orthodox New Testament, states 
that he was born in a manger; while the other, appear- 
ing in the apocryphal Protevangelion, and which was also 
divinely inspired at one time, declares he was born in a 
cave. 

It would not seem strange to claim that so remark- 
able a child was born in both places. 

In the gospel of the Protevangelion we are told that 
as Joseph and Mary were on their way to Bethlehem, 
Mary riding upon an ass, that she said to Joseph : 

"Take me down from the ass, for that which is in me 
presses to come forth." 

"But Joseph replied, Whither shall I take thee? for the 
place is desert." 

'Then said Mary again to Joseph, take me down, for 
that which is within me mightily presses me. 

"And Joseph took her down. And he found there a 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 163 

cave, and led her into it. * * * Then (said Joseph) I 
beheld a woman (a midwife) coming down from the 
mountains, and she said to me. Where art thou going, O 
man? 

"And I said to her, I go to enquire for a Hebrew mid- 
wife. 

*'She replied to me, Where is the woman that is about 
to be delivered? 

''And I answered, In the cave, and she is betrothed to 
me. 

''Then said the midwife. Is she not thy wife? 

"Joseph answered. It is Mary, who was educated in 
the Holy of Holies, in the house of the Lord, and she 
fell to me by lot, and is not my wife but has conceived 
by the Holy Ghost. 

"The midwife said, Is this true? 

"He answered, Come and see. 

"And the midwife went along with him, and stood in 
the cave.'' 

There, w^e are told, the midwife saw miracles enough 
to convince her that Jehovah was really the father of the 
coming child. The cave, naturally as dark as midnight, 
was lit up with heavenly lights so that the eyes of Jo- 
seph and the midwife could hardly bear it. 

As soon as Jehovah's baby was born, the midwife went 
out and hailed a woman passing by, "A virgin hath 
brought forth, which is a thing contrary to nature." 

It is, somewhat. 

The woman, whose name was Salome, was, it is stated, 
afflicted with a withered hand. The midwife, noticing 



164 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

her affliction said, "Come with me, and we will have it 
cured. 

"So she took her into the cave, and the infant Jesus 
immediately healed her." 

Thus was the divinity and miraculous power of Jeho- 
vah's son disclosed when he was but a few minutes old. 

From tliat on until his sacrifice, as ordained by his 
father, Jehovah, as told by the divinely inspired Roman 
priests that gave us the story, Jesus proved his divine 
origin by being the greatest magician Jehovah had ever 
charmed. He healed all manner of diseases, made the 
blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. He 
caused a legion of devils to come out of a lunatic's mouth, 
and run and enter into a herd of hogs near by. 

This drove the hogs insane, so that they committed sui- 
cide. 

He made w^ine out of water, and walked across a lake 
without getting his feet wet. 

He fed thousands of people with a few^ sardines and 
a handful of biscuits, and then had enough left over to 
fill all the picnic baskets in the crowd. 

He and the Devil went to the top of a mountain that 
was so high that they could see the entire earth. 

Geographers, to date, have not located that mountain. 

Then the pair journeyed to the pinnacle of the temple 
and sat down on it. 

He cursed fruit trees so that they withered and died, 
raised the dead, and came to life himself again after he 
was sacrificed to the God Jehovah, who begat him. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 165 

These and more strange stories are told in the orthodox 
New Testament. 

The apocryphal books, discarded at the Council of 
Nice, tell of many more. 

In the apocryphal "First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus 
Christ," we are informed that "Jesus spake even when he 
was in the cradle, and said to his mother: Mary, I am 
Jesus the Son of God." 

This gospel also declares that Jesus was born in a 
cave, and not in a manger. 

It narrates the story, found in Matthew, of the journey 
Joseph and Mary took to Egypt, in order to save their 
young god from being killed by King Herod. 

The apocryphal "Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ" 
states that Joseph and Mary went to a "great city" in 
Egypt, where was erected an immense stone idol of one 
of the Egyptian gods. This idol, it is stated, could talk. 
However, as soon as the stone idol learned that Jehovah's 
young son was in town, it fell down and was broken to 
pieces. We also find in this gospel more stories about 
casting out devils. It says that when the Virgin Mary 
hung the cloths worn by the infant Jesus out to dry, that 
those possessed of devils would come and touch the gar- 
ments and the devils would scamper out of their mouths. 
They did not enter into hogs, however, when Jesus was in 
Egypt; they assumed the forms of crows and serpents 
and flew and crawled away. 

A young Egyptian woman, a bride, took the infant 
Jesus in her arms and kissed him ; she immediately began 
to talk and sing praises to Jehovah. 



166 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Another incident, narrated in the sixth chapter of the 
First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus, runs as follows : 

"In this place they (Joseph, Mary and Jesus) abode 
three days, meeting with the greatest respect and most 
splendid entertainment. 

"And being then furnished by the people with provisions 
for the road, they departed and went to another city, in 
which they were inclined to lodge, because it was a fa- 
mous place. 

"There was in this city a gentlewoman, who, as she 
went down one day to the river to bathe, behold accursed 
Satan leaped upon her in the form of a serpent, and folded 
himself about her belly, and every night lay upon her. 

"This woman seeing the Lady St. Mary, and the Lord 
Christ the infant in her bosom, asked the Lady St. Mary, 
that she would give her the child to kiss, and carry in 
her arms. 

"When she had consented, and as soon as the woman 
had moved the child, Satan left her, and fled away, nor 
did the woman ever afterwards see him/' 

There is every reason to think that the inspired author 
of the foregoing was the same party that wrote the story 
about the devils and the pigs. 

This gospel further says : 

"On the morrow the same woman brought perfumed 
water to w^ash the Lord Jesus ; and when she had washed 
him, she preserved the water. 

"And there was a girl there, whose body was white with 
leprosy, who being sprinkled with this water, and washed, 
was instantly cleansed from her leprosy. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 167 

*The people therefore said, Without doubt Joseph and 
Mary and that boy are gods, for they do not look like 
mortals/' 

The next cure that this gospel narrates is that of a 
young bridegroom whom some Egyptian sorcerers af- 
flicted with senility on his wedding day. He looked upon 
the infant Jesus, and the spell was instantly removed. 

Another remarkable instance disclosing the miraculous 
powers of Jehovah's son, even when a suckling babe, is 
found in the seventh chapter of the Gospel of the Infancy 
of Jesus Christ, and reads as follows : 

''But going forward on the morrow, they (Joseph and 
Mary and the infant Jesus) came to another city, and 
saw three women going from a certain grave with great 
weeping. 

"When St. Mary saw them, she spoke to the girl who 
was their companion, saying, Go and inquire of them, 
what is the matter with them, and what misfortune has 
befallen them? 

''When the girl asked them, they made her no answer, 
but asked her again. Who are ye, and where are ye going? 
For the day is far spent, and night is at hand. 

"We are travelers, saith the girl, and are seeking for 
an inn to lodge at. 

"They replied. Go along with us, and lodge with us. 

"They then followed them, and were introduced into a 
new house, well furnished with all sorts of furniture. 

"It was now winter time, and the girl went into the 
parlor where these women were, and found them weeping 
and lamenting, as before. 



168 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

"By them stood a mule, covered over with silk, and an 
ebony collar hanging down from his neck, whom they 
kissed, and were feeding. 

"But when the girl said. How handsome, ladies, that 
mule is! they replied with tears, and said. This mule, 
which you see, was our brother, born of this same mother 
as we ; for when our father died, and left us a very large 
estate, and we had only this brother, and we endeavored 
to procure him a suitable match and thought he should 
be married as other men, some giddy and jealous woman 
bewitched him without our knowledge. 

"And we, one night, a little before day, while the doors 
of the house were all fast shut, saw this our brother 
changed into a mule, such as you now see him to be. 

"And we, in the melancholy condition in which you 
see us, having no father to comfort us, have applied to 
all the wise men, magicians, and diviners in the world, 
but they have been of no service to us." 

As soon as the girl — ^who was evidently Jesus' nurse — 
heard this she hastened to Mary, who, we are told, 
brought Jesus and set him on the mule's back. Jehovah's 
infant son was equal to the occasion — ^the mule was in- 
stantly turned back into a young man. 

The trip of the infant Jesus through Egypt was a con- 
tinual display of such juggleries and miracles as the Egyp- 
tians had never witnessed before — and this, be it observed, 
was a period when all manner of gods and magicians, and 
demons and sorcerers, were plentiful. The miraculous 
healings that were produced by the water that Jesus was 
bathed in were of daily occurrence. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 169 

It's a wonder that some enterprising Egyptian drug- 
gist didn't have him scrubbed in a tank, and bottle the 
water to be sold as a cure-all. 

Also many cures were effected by the touch of Jesus' 
swaddling cloths. One case is recorded of a man who 
had two wives, each of whom had a sick boy. One of 
the wrves, becoming converted to Jehovah's religion, 
traded a costly carpet to Mary for one of these cloths. 
With this she bandaged her boy, whose name was Caleb, 
and he was instantly made well. 

The other wife had no such saving faith and so her 
boy died. 

The result was that the heathen wife determined to kill 
the boy Caleb. She threw him into a red-hot oven and 
closed the door; but Caleb wouldn't bum. He sat there 
laughing, until his own mother hearing him, came to his 
rescue. 

Then the jealous wife threw Caleb into a well; but 
Caleb wouldn't drown; and he was dragged out of the 
well unharmed. 

Jesus, the son of Jehovah, had put a charmed life on 
Caleb. 

The infant Jesus also got even with the heathen mother 
— he caused her to tumble down the well v/here she had 
tried to drown Caleb, and break her neck. 

The next day a converted woman brought a dead child 
and placed it in the bed beside Jesus. The child immedi- 
ately came to life. 

After this Joseph and Mary and the infant Jesus re- 
turned to their own home in Bethlehem, to which place 



170 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

multitudes, afflicted with disease, used to journey and be 
cured. 

One case, narrated in the thirteenth chapter of the 
Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, was that of a girl 
tormented by Satan, who came in the shape of a dragon, 
and sucked her blood until she looked like a corpse. Her 
mother brought her to Bethlehem, where St. Mary gave 
her one of Jesus' diapers, with instructions to shake it in 
the face of Satan the next time he appeared. This was 
done; it was more than Satan could stand; flames and 
burning coals flew out of the garment into Satan's face 
and eyes, and he hurried back to Hell. The girl, we are 
told, was never troubled with him again. 

Here is the original story of Judas Iscariot, as told in 
the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of the Infancy of 
Jesus : 

^^Another woman likewise, lived there, whose son was 
possessed by Satan. 

"This boy, named Judas, as often as Satan seized him, 
was inclined to bite all that were present ; and if he found 
no one else near him, he would bite his own hands and 
other parts. 

"But the mother of this miserable boy, hearing of St. 
Mary and her son Jesus, arose presently, and taking her 
son in her arms, brought him to the Lady Mary. 

"In the meantime James and Joses (sons of Joseph) 
had taken away the infant, the Lord Jesus, to play at a 
proper season with other children; and when they went 
forth, they sat down and the Lord Jesus with them. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 171 

"Then Judas, who was possessed, came and sat down 
at the right hand of Jesus. 

"When Satan was acting upon him as usual, he went 
about to bite the Lord Jesus; and because he could not 
do it, he struck Jesus on the right side, so that he cried 
out. 

"And in the same moment Satan went out of the boy, 
and ran away like a mad dog. 

"This same boy who struck Jesus, and out of whom 
Satan went in the form of a dog, was Judas Iscariot, who 
betrayed him to the Jews. 

"And that same side, on which Judas struck him, the 
Jews pierced with a spear." 

To those not versed in the mysteries of theology it has 
always appeared strange that Jehovah's son, who daily 
and publicly performed the most amazing and supernat- 
ural exhibitions imaginable, was so unknown to the Jew- 
ish population that it was necessary to hire a man to iden- 
tify him. Theology explains this, however, by claiming 
that Jehovah had purposely blinded the eyes of the Jews 
so that they would not recognize his son if they met 
him on the street. 

It also appears from the narrative concerning Judas 
Iscariot, found in the Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus 
Qirist, that Judas was destined from childhood to do his 
part in the bloody sacrifice of a god. He was purposely 
doomed and damned. 

This, it will be noted, sustains the Calvinist doctrine of 
pre-destination. 

]\lany more wonders did Jehovah's son work, as related 



172 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

in the Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ. As a boy, 
he constructed mud animals and birds of all descriptions. 
These he would blow upon, and they would run about 
and fly away, to the amusement and astonishment of his 
playmates. He would also offer food and drink to these 
mud animals, of which they eagerly partook. 

One day he walked into a dyer's shop, gathered all the 
garments sent there to be dyed, and threw them into a 
furnace. The poor dyer was frantic; but Jesus asked him 
what colors he wanted them to be dyed, and, when in- 
formed, he fulled each garment out of the fire, dyed as 
requested, and not even scorched. 

Jesus' step-father, Joseph, was a carpenter, and when- 
ever he happened to saw a board too short, Jesus would 
stretch it out to the proper length; and when he sawed 
it too long, Jesus would push it shorter. He was a handy 
lad to have around a carpenter shop. 

Once Joseph took a contract to build a throne for the 
king. It took him two years to complete the job, and 
when at last he carried it to the palace, it would not fit 
the place designed for it. This made the king, who was 
badly in need of the throne, so angry that Joseph, fearful 
of what might be the consequences of his blunder, went 
to bed without his supper. Jesus went to him and asked 
him what it was that troubled him so. When informed, 
he told his step- father not to worry — that he would square 
things; so the next morning he went to the palace and 
squeezed the throne to a perfect fit. 

For amusement Jesus would throw little boys into a 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 17a 

fire, and they would turn into kids; then he would pull 
them out of the fire, and they became boys again. 

He had Jehovah's temper, for, we are told, he thought 
nothing of killing a boy whom he became angry at. 

One time a snake bit a man called Simon the Canaanite, 
so that he began to swell and was about to die. Jesus 
made the snake suck all the poison out of Simon, and thus 
healed him. The snake swelled up, burst asunder, and 
expired. 

Joseph and Mary felt that as Jesus was destined to 
grow up and be a god, he should have a good education ; 
so, as soon as he was considered old enough, they took 
him to the best school they could find. 

The teacher was a man by the name of Zaccheus, who 
was considered the most learned professor in Jerusalem. 
Zaccheus started to instruct the little Jesus in the alphabet, 
and, when Jesus asked to be shown the highest grade 
books in the school, Zaccheus threatened to chastise him. 
However, he did not do it, and Christianity was thereby 
spared the spectacle of a pedagogue spanking one of its 
gods. Jesus then disclosed such a knowledge of all the 
books known to the teacher, and picked them up and read 
them with such ease, that the teacher sent him back to 
Joseph and Mary with a note stating that the boy's edu- 
cation was completed before the days of Noah. 

There was not a dogma in theology taught but that 
Jesus understood. Of course the sciences, being unheard 
of at that time, he knew nothing about. 

All these wonderful things about Jesus are told in the 
apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ; and 



174 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

this gospel, it is claimed, was at one time the only divinely 
inspired account in use among the churches of Asia and 
Africa. 

Other apocryphal gospels, still extant, narrate more 
miracles performed by Jehovah's son. These gospels, 
containing all these wonders, as well as the recognized 
gospels of the New Testament, began to spring up in the 
first century, and continued to accumulate to the fourth. 
All, apparently, bear the same evidence as to their 
divinely inspired origin. 

In fact, none of them contain a more wonderful test 
of a Christian's faith than is found in the last chapter and 
closing verses of the orthodox gospel of Mark. 

Judged by this test, it is very simple to tell a genuine 
Qiristian from a mere imitator. 

The genuine Christian, says this gospel and recognized 
authority, can still make devils come out of people's 
mouths ; the genuine Christian, having no education what- 
ever, can speak all foreign languages; he can safely handle 
rattlesnakes and tarantulas — their bite cannot harm him; 
he can drink any poison known to chemistry, such as car- 
bolic or nitric acid, without feeling any ill effect; and he 
can walk into a hospital, and by laying his hands on their 
persons, heal the most hopeless cases. 

Any person professing Christianity, who cannot do 
these things, says the divinely inspired Gospel of Mark, 
is a deceiver, and is damned. ^ 

The sacrifice of Jesus to the God Jehovah was accom- 
panied by mysterious phenomena, the like of which had 
never before, nor has ever since, been seen. The earth 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 175 

(Juaked, and great rocks were rent asunder; the sun 
stopped shining, and black darkness enveloped the land; 
graves opened, and the dead walked forth; a god was 
dead, and ''descended into Hell''; after three days he 
returned from Hell, resumed his earthly body, and as- 
cended bodily to Heaven. 

All this occurred in the City of Jerusalem, and the 
bodily ascension to Heaven was made in broad daylight, 
and must have been witnessed by thousands of people; 
and yet no secular writers of the period, Hebrew, Greek 
or Roman, make any mention whatever of these astound- 
ing sights. 

The divinely inspired recording of these supernatural 
events was left to holy fathers who lived years after 
they happened, and in a distant country, and whose only 
authority was that they had heard that somebody heard 
that somebody else heard long ago all about it. 

According to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus it 
v/as the literal Hell — the lake of fire and brimstone — into 
which Jesus descended, and there remained for three 
days. In the fifteenth chapter and first verse of this gos- 
pel it says, "while all the saints were rejoicing, behold 
Satan, the prince and captain of death, said to the prince 
of Hell : 

"Prepare to receive Jesus of Nazareth himself, who 
boasted that he was the Son of God." 

St. Jerome, w^ho lived in the fourth century, also af- 
firms that Jesus went to Hell. 

The sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Nicodemus 
gives an account of Jesus' entrance into Hell. It seems 



176 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

that Satan, fearful that Jesus was about to destroy the 
place, made his escape, and left things in sole charge of 
Beelzebub, "the Prince of Hell." 

This Beelzebub was a new devil. There is no account 
of him in the Old Testament. Jehovah must have created 
him about the same time he begat Jesus. 

The Gospel of Nicodemus also tells why Jesus went to 
Hell, and what he was doing there during his three days' 
sojourn. It was to rescue the chosen people, from Adam 
down, who were locked up there. 

This proves the orthodox contention that all the count- 
less sacrifices of bulls, and goats, and sheep, and pigeons 
and roosters, were not sufficient to appease Jehovah's 
wrath against mankind, on account of Adam and Eve 
eating the apple. 

The first lost soul that Jesus rescued, as told in the 
nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of Nicodemus, was 
Adam himself. The third verse of this chapter narrates 
how he and Jesus shook hands. The first verse of the 
twentieth chapter states that Michael, the archangel, was 
standing by, and that Jesus turned Adam over to him, 
and that Michael then escorted Adam to Paradise. 

No mention is made of Eve. She is probably still in 
Hell, suffering out her unpardonable crime. 

The first angels that Adam met, on his arrival at Para- 
dise, were Enoch and Elijah, who went there bodily, 
with all their clothes on. Adam expressed great surprise 
on meeting these two. He said he had hunted all over 
Hell for thousands of years, and could not find them. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 177 

He did not know what had become of them, and had 
given them up as lost. 

It appears, however, that after the sacrifice of Jeho- 
vah's son, Enoch and EHjah were not allowed to remain 
in Heaven any longer with their bodies of flesh and blood. 
Jehovah sent them to Jerusalem, and there had them 
killed. Only their souls are now in Heaven. This is re- 
corded in the fourth verse of the twentietlri chapter of 
the Gospel of Nicodemus. 

The Gospel of Nicodemus appeared towards the close 
of the third century, and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, 
Luke and John were finally compiled in the fourth. 

Among the Christians of the early centuries no book 
was more devoutly cherished and revered than the 
apocryphal "Shepherd of Hermas." It was accepted as 
divinely inspired into the fifth century. It was endorsed 
by Ireneus, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome. The book is 
composed of "Visions," "Commands," and "Similitudes." 
It is mostly a warning against the charms of women, and 
an admonition to let the wicked creatures alone. 

The author of the book, Hermas, was a brother of 
Pius, Bishop of Rome. As a "woman-hater" he nearly 
equalled Paul. He hated them because Eve had eaten of 
the apple, and then tempted Adam to eat of it. Thus 
the woman started all the world's woes. All the doom 
and damnation, all the bloody sacrifices from goats to 
gods to appease Jehovah's wrath, were caused by the 
woman. By nature Hermas really liked women, and was 
honest enough to admit it; but when he became a Chris- 
tian he discovered the wickedness of such passion. 



178 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

The First Book of Hermas, Vision I, tells how he was 
once tempted. While walking along the banks of the 
river Tiber one day, thinking such holy thoughts as be- 
comes a saintly monk, he discovered, bathing in the river, 
the most beautiful maiden his eyes had ever beheld. As 
he looked upon the lovely vision human longings filled his 
soul, and human passions surged through his veins. For 
the moment he forgot his holy calling — forgot the sack- 
cloth and ashes, and scourging of the body, necessary to 
make a saint. Hermas only saw the lovely vision before 
him, bathing in the river. He says, "And when I saw 
her I thought with myself, saying, How happy should I 
be if I had such a wife!" and Hermas, the brother of the 
bishop, sighed and walked on. 

"And when I had walked a little," he says, "I fell 
asleep. And the spirit caught me away." 

Jehovah, it appears, had put him into a trance, for, we 
are told, Hermas saw Heaven opened and there appeared 
the beautiful maiden, in the form of an angel, looking 
down upon him. And then she told Hermas how he 
had sinned as he strolled along the river, and how he 
must repent, and never again entertain such evil desires 
if he wished to become a saint. Hermas at first denied 
any thought of evil, but the angel, it seems, knew better. 

"Then she," so he writes, "smiling upon me, said : The 
desire of naughtiness has risen up in thy heart." 

And all that poor Hermas had done, so he himself con- 
fesses, was to say to himself, "how happy should I be if 
I had such a wife." 

The pathetic part of this story of the temptation of 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 179 

Hermas is that, after all, the vision bathing in the river 
may have been nothing but a male angel, impersonating 
a beautiful maiden, upon whom Jehovah had cast a charm. 
Anyway, Jehovah was often up to such tricks. 

Another experience, similar to the one narrated, is the 
story told of St. Anthony, who was born at Coma, Egypt, 
in the year 251, and who was such a religious youth that 
he looked upon woman as sent by the Devil to lead holy 
men to destruction. He therefore decided that he would 
be a male virgin himself, and so he gave all his money 
away and took to the woods, without a cent in his pocket. 
He finally became a saint by subsisting mostly on wild 
berries, roots and water. St. Anthony was known as a 
^'grazing monk," and he roamed about shelterless and 
nearly naked, browsing like a cow on herbs. 

One time the Devil tempted him nearly to the falling 
point. Satan appeared to him one moonlight night in 
the form of a beautiful girl, with hair as black as the 
raven and eyes to match. Her lips were like luscious 
cherries, and her plump bosom heaved beneath her loose- 
fitting gown of snowy white. She looked love's eyes at 
St. Anthony, and played with her dainty fingers beneath 
the bunch of whiskers on his chin. This was the great 
crisis in St. Anthony's career. 

But he did not fall — he came through without a blem- 
ish. Then he started for the desert sands where neither 
herbs nor berries grew and went on a protracted fast. 
He became so starved and weak that he found himself 
unable to travel back to where he could find good brow^s- 
ing again, and had about made up his mind to die and 



180 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

go to Heaven, when the archangel Michael flew down 
to him with baskets of food and told him to eat and live. 
St. Anthony did this and lived to become one of the most 
holy men in the church calendar. 

Poor woman, doubly cursed by Jehovah\s wrath! Of 
her the godly Saint Tertullian exclaimed, "Woman, you 
ought to go about clad in mourning and rags, your eyes 
filled with tears of remorse, to make us forget that you 
have been mankind's destruction. Woman, you are the 
gate to Hell." 

And St. Hieronymous said: "Matrimony is always a 
vice, all that can be done is to excuse it and to sanctify 
it; therefore it was made a religious sacrament." Accord- 
ing to this, the original reason of requiring a priest to 
officiate at a marriage ceremony was to have the sin of 
getting married absolved. 

Origen, who was one of the leading lights in making 
our New Testament, and who of all others insisted on 
discarding a hundred and odd gospels then extant (fourth 
century), and keeping only the four gospels we now 
have, declared: "Matrimony is impure and unholy; a 
means of sensual passion." Origen emasculated himself, 
so he could look with holy contempt upon woman. 

St. Paul said: "The man is the image and glory 
of God; but woman is the glory of man." And St. Peter 
cries, "Wives, obey your husbands !" 

No wonder the Christian world has for centuries 
looked upon woman as an inferior creature in the light of 
these divinely inspired teachings. 

St. Thomas of Aquino, who lived in the thirteenth 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 181 

century, said: "Woman is a rapidly growing weed, an 
imperfect being. Her body attains maturity more rap- 
idly only because it is of less value, and nature is engaged 
less in her making. Women are born to be eternally 
maintained under the yoke of their lords and masters, 
endowed by nature with superiority in every respect, and 
therefore destined to rule." 

The "jus primae noctis'' (right of the first night) was 
legally practiced in Christian Europe far into the Middle 
Ages. The landlord claimed and exercised the right of 
sleeping with the bride of a peasant the first night of the 
marriage. The Church ruled that this was all right in 
the sight of Jehovah. In fact, the religious Council at Ma- 
con, held during the sixth century, seriously discussed the 
question as to whether woman had a soul or not. It was 
decided in her favor by a majority of one. In Christian 
Scotland this right of the landlord to sleep with the peas- 
ant bride the first night was modified by King Malcolm 
III at the close of the eleventh century by allowing the 
groom to pay a marriage tax to the landlord. In Ger- 
many, according to the records of the Swabian monas- 
tery at Adelberg, of the year 1496, a law had been en- 
acted whereby the peasant could redeem his wife from 
the lust of the feudal lord by the payment of a bag of 
salt and the bride to give what would now be a little 
over $5 in money, "in a dish large enough that she might 
sit in it." 

In Poland the noblemen had a legal right to deflour 
any maiden they pleased, and if her lover or anybody 



182 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

else protested, the law condemned him to receive one 
hundred lashes. 

In England, until 1870, a man was entitled to all the 
personal property of his wife. Prior to this period an 
English woman was a mere cipher before the law. In 
the year 1888 Bishop J. N. Wood delivered a lecture at 
Westminster, in which he declared that '*as late as a cen- 
tury previous English women had not been permitted to 
eat at their husband's table, nor to speak until they were 
spoken to. As a symbol of the husband's power, a whip 
hung over the bed, that the law permitted the man to 
use on his wife. Only the daughters were required to 
obey the mother; by her sons she was regarded as a ser- 
vant.'' It was not such a very long while ago that the 
English law was repealed that allowed a husband to 
thrash his wife with "a stick no thicker than his thumb." 

All of which is in strict accordance with the injunc- 
tions of the God Jehovah, who turned over the Midianite 
maidens to the soldiers, and who commanded that a 
woman caught in adultery should be stoned to death.. 

After the sacrifice of Jesus, his disciples, we are 
told, became magicians. An account is given in the fifth 
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, of Peter killing a 
man and woman who had lied about a real estate trans- 
action, by simply ordering them to die. In the ninth 
chapter of this same book, Peter healed the sick and 
raised the dead. Angels frequently appeared toi the dis- 
ciples and talked with them. 

The Book of Revelations, which the theologians claim 
was written by John, but which did not make its appear- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH. 183 

ance until more than a hundred years after John's death, 
is a marvelous experience of strange sights seen by this 
disciple. He saw Heaven, and Jehovah seated there on 
his throne, together with all the royal paraphernalia ap- 
propriate for so powerful a potentate. Lightnings and 
thunderings and mystic voices proceeded from the throne, 
and Jehovah was guarded by ''four beasts full of eyes 
before and behind" (Revelation iv, verse 6). The de- 
scription of these animals follows : 

"And the first beast was like a lion, and the second 
beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, 
and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the 
four beasts had each of them six wings about him." 
Quite a menagerie. 

He also saw an angel clothed with a cloud, wearing 
a rainbow for a hat, and whose face was like the sun, 
and his feet made of fire. He was so large that he stood 
with one foot in the middle of the ocean and the other 
in the middle of the earth. According to the geograph- 
ical knowledge we now possess he must have cut quite 
a figure. This angel had a voice like the roar of a lion, 
and as loud as "seven thunders." 

He saw a woman wearing the sun for a cloak, and 
standing on the moon. He saw a dragon with seven 
heads and ten horns, and a gold crown on each of his 
heads. He also saw creatures coming out of the sea 
with seven heads and ten horns. 

No other man, that was perfectly sober, ever witnessed 
such sights as described by the author of the Book of 
Revelation. 



CHAPTER X. 

A FTER Jesus made his ascension from the city of 
■^ ^ Jerusalem to Heaven, he became a god, equal in 
every respect to Jehovah. From that time three gods have 
operated and ruled the universe! — Jehovah, Jesus, and the 
Holy Ghost. These three, however, are only one God. Each 
one is the three, and the whole three are the one. Any 
theologian can explain this. 

None of these gods, which are one, however, make 
their, or his, appearance on earth any more; Jehovah 
never leaves his throne. 

Nor are animals or humans offered in sacrifice to 
Jehovah any longer. This ceremony ceased when can- 
nibalism disappeared and the art of cooking became pop- 
ular, and the priests preferred sitting down at a table 
rather than sticking an iron prong into the altar and 
dragging out their food in half-raw chunks. 

All personal manifestations of the God Jehovah have 
now ceased. They were done away with when the ortho^ 
dox Christian Church was formed. Jehovah then or- 
dained special representatives on earth to attend to his 
business, the most prominent of these being known as 
popes. Also, all the kings and kaisers and czars are 
ordained by Jehovah. St. Paul tells us this. The popes, 
however, outclass them all. In fact, the popes are nearly 
gods. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 185 

Pope Stephanas V, who occupied the papal chair in the 
last part of the ninth century, declared: 

"The popes, like Jesus, are conceived by their mothers 
through the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. All popes 
are a certain species of man-gods, for the purpose of 
being the better able to conduct the functions of mediator 
between God and mankind. All powers in Heaven, as 
well as on earth, are given them.'* 

Here are some of the titles of a pope : 

"Most Divine of All Heads/' 

"Holy Father of Fathers.'' 

"Pontiff Supreme over All Prelates." 

"Overseer of the Christian Religion." 

"The Chief Pastor." 

"Pastor of Pastors." 

"Christ by Unction." 

"Abraham by Patriarchate." 

"Melchisedec in Order." 

"Moses in Authority." 

"Samuel in the Judicial Office." 

"High Priest, Supreme Bishop." , 
, "Heir of the Apostles; Peter in Power." 

"Key-Bearer of the Kingdom of Heaven." 

"Pontiff Appointed with Plentitude of Power." 

"Vicar of Christ." 

"Sovereign Priest." 

"Head of All the Holy Churches." 

"Chief of the Universal Church." 

"Rock against which the proud gates of Hell prevail 



186 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

"Infallible Pope," etc., etc. 

''What art thou?" writes St. Bernard, Abbot of Clair- 
vaux, in a letter to Pope Eugenius III. "Thou art the 
Prince of Bishops, thou art the Heir of the Apostles. 
* * * Thou art he to whom the keys of Heaven are 
given, to whom the sheep are intrusted. There are in- 
deed other doorkeepers of Heaven, and other shepherds 
of the flocks; but thou art the more glorious in propor- 
tion as thou hast also, in a different fashion, inherited 
before others these names, h^ ^k * Canst thou not, 
when a just reason occurs, shut up Heaven against a 
bishop, depose him from his episcopal office, and deliver 
him over to Satan." 

The Council of Lateran, in its first session, gave to 
the pope the appellation of "Prince of the Universe;" 
in its second session it named him "Prince and King, 
who is to be adored by all people, and who is very like 
unto God." St. Bernard affirms that "none except God 
is like the pope, either in Heaven or on earth." Says Pope 
Innocent III: "The pope holds the place of the true 
God." Cardinal Manning endorsed and drew public at- 
tention to that clause of the Catholic faith which says : 
"We declare, affirm, define and pronounce it necessary to 
salvation for every human creature to be subject to the 
Roman pontiff." And in a published discourse he repre- 
sents the pope as saying: "I claim to be the Supreme 
Judge and Director of the consciences of men; of the 
peasant that tills the field, and the prince that sits on the 
throne; of the household that lives in the shade of pri- 
vacy, and the Legislature that makes laws for kingdoms. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 187 

I am the sole last supreme judge of what is right and 
wro(ng/' 

The Ecumenical Council, held in Rome, 1870, settled 
for all time to come the infallibility of the pope. Of 
course this had been maintained by the popes for centu- 
ries, for it had been declared that *Thou are another god 
on earth,'' but it remained for a papal council of the 
nineteenth century to officially pronounce the infallible 
divinity of the Roman ''god on earth." The vote of the 
council was taken on July 13, 1870, and on July i8th of 
that year the decree was formally promulgated with great 
ceremony at St. Peter's Cathedral, Rome. The following 
description of the event, by Dr. J. Cummings, of Lon- 
don, England, is interesting reading: 

''The pope had a grand throne erected in front of the 
eastern window in St. Peter's, and arrayed himself in a 
perfect blaze of precious stones, and surrounded himself 
with cardinals and patriarchs and bishops in gorgeous 
apparel, for a magnificent spectacular scene. He had 
chosen the early morning hour, and the eastern window, 
that the rising sun should flash its beams full upon his 
magnificence, and by it his diamonds, rubies and emer- 
alds be so refracted and reflected that he should appear to 
be not a man, but what the decree proclaimed him to be, 
one having all the glory of God. * * * ^he pope 
posted himself at an early hour at the eastern window, 
but the sun refused to shine. The dismal dawn darkened 
rapidly to a deeper and deeper gloom. The dazzle of 
glory could not be produced. The aged eyes of the would- 
be god could not see to read by daylight, and he (the 



188 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

god) had to send for candles. Candle-light strained his 
nerves of vision too much (gods are not used to candles), 
and he handed the reading over to a cardinal. The card- 
dinal began to read amid an everblackening gloom, but 
had not read many lines before such a glare of lurid fire 
and such a crash burst forth from the inky heavens as 
was never equalled at Rome before. Terror fell upon 
all. The reading ceased. One cardinal jumped from his 
chair, and exclaimed, 'It is the voice of God speaking, 
tlie thunders of Sinai/ '' 

Even the ordinary priests of the Roman Church are 
magicians; they can absolve sinners, and by muttering a 
few mystic words turn bread and wine into the actual 
body and blood of the sacrificed son of Jehovah. The 
manner in which this is done is told by the Rev. Anthony 
Haering, Co-operator of Oberdorfen in the last century. 
He said, as recorded in a sermon : 

''With this ability of granting absolution, Jesus has 
bestowed a power upon the priesthood that is a terror 
even to Hell itself and which Lucifer himself cannot re- 
sist; a power that reaches into the immeasurable eternity 
where all other earthly powers find their limit and their 
termination; a power, I tell you, that is capable of break- 
ing fetters that have been wrought for eternity by the 
commission of great sins. Yea, verily, this power of 
remission of sins makes the priest to a certain extent a 
second god, for, to remit sins is, in the course of nature, 
a prerogative of God alone; and still this is not the 
highest pinnacle of priestly potency, his power extends 
still further. He is empowered to render even God him- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 189 

self subservient to him! How? When the priest steps 
up to the altar to offer up holy mass, then Jesus Christ, 
who sits on the right of his Father, arises, as it were, 
to be ready at the beckoning of his priest on earth. And 
scarcely has the priest began the consecration when Jesus, 
surrounded by the heavenly hosts, descends to earth and 
on the sacrificial altar and upon the words of the priest 
he there changes the bread and wine to his sacred flesh 
and blood, and then he lets the priest lift him up auid lay 
him down with his hands, even though he were the most 
corrupt and most unworthy of all priests on earth. 
Truly, such power exceeds even the power of the great- 
est angels of Heaven, even that of the Queen of Heaven 
herself. Therefore Saint Francis of Assisi was wont 
to say, very properly: Tf a priest and an angel should 
meet at the same time, I should salute tlie priest first 
and the angel after, because the priest is endowed witli 
much greater power and majesty than the angels!' '' 

The miraculous powers of the popes and priests since 
the sacrifice of Jesus to the God Jehovah equal the stories 
of magic found in the Bible. The accounts of the mir- 
acles accomplished by holy relics of the saints would fill 
volumes. Helena, the mother of Constantine, the founder 
of orthodox Christianity, discovered, so it is claimed, 
the cross upon which Jesus had been sacrificed over three 
hundred years before. Enough of it has been accumu- 
lated since its discovery by Helena to start a wholesale 
lumber yard. Splinters from that cross are still sold to 
the faithful in the Catholic countries of Europe and Span- 
ish America. 



190 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Helena not only discovered the cross of Christ him- 
self, but also the crosses upon which the two thieves were 
crucified. By the miraculous power of the Roman priests 
the thieves' crosses are also a cure for all manner of dis- 
ease. The timber from these doesn't cost the believer as 
much as that from Jesus' cross — and doubtless will do 
the work just as well. The sale of these began early in 
the fourth century. They are still being retailed. 

Shortly after the wonderful finding of these crosses, 
the graves of all the apostles were found. The bones of 
these apostles are in existence to this day. In fact, the 
body of each apostle has furnished bones, hair and nails 
enough to fill a museum. There is scarcely a priest in 
any strictly Catholic country that does not keep a good 
supply of St. Peter's fingers and toes. 

The skeletons of the saints are also quite numerous 
and command a good price. St. Dionsius, for instance, 
exists in Europe in two complete specimens, one skele- 
ton being at St. Denis and the other at St. Demmeran, 
besides which well-preserved skulls of him are exhibited 
at the two cities of Prague and Bamberg, and an extra 
hand is on exhibition at Munich. 

The worship of the Virgin Mary began in the fifth 
century. There was a dispute among the clergy whether 
to call her the "Mother of God," or only the "Mother of 
Christ." Nestor ius, one of the church fathers, thought 
it improper to call her the "Mother of God" — he wanted 
her called the "Mother of Christ." The synod of Ephe- 
sus, however, decided on the "Mother of God." The 
people, who had been accustomed to worshiping all the 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 191 

gods of the old mythology, also began to worship Mary's 
mother, wSt. Ann, and named her the ''Grandmother of 
God/' This, however, was going a little too strong, and 
finally Pope Clement XI ordered a halt. He doubtless 
feared that the devout populace would deify all the rest of 
Mary's relations, and would soon be praying to the 
"Uncle of God," the "Aunt of God" and dozens of God's 
first and second cousins. Mary's mother is now only St. 
Ann. Whether or not Adam had a navel has been a 
source of controversy time and again. The holy fathers 
have not decided the question up to the present writing. 

Albrecht of Laningan, Bishop of Regensburg, wrote 
an exhaustive treatise as to whether the Virgin Mary 
was a blonde or brunette. He was absolutely certain 
that the earth was flat, but he wasn't quite so sure re- 
garding Mary's complexion. 

During the Crusades Europe became flooded witli 
relics. Sacred articles of every description were brought 
from the Holy Land. Saint Louis, King of France, by 
the payment of an enormous sum, obtained possession of 
pieces of wood from the "true cross," the sponge that 
was filled with vinegar and offered to Jesus, some of the 
original nails by which he was crucified, the purple coat 
he wore and the crown of thorns. In fact, the entire 
wardrobe of Jesus, of the Virgin Mary, of St. Joseph and 
all of the apostles were produced. Thorns from the 
crown of thorns were sold in every village of Europe. 
Even the blood of Jesus, sometimes In single drops, again 
by the bottleful, was produced. One of the most remark- 
able relics brought back from the Crusades were samples 



192 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

of milk from the breasts of the Holy Virgin. The quan- 
tity of this milk exhibited was more than a score of wet 
nurses could produce in a year.. Even the swaddling 
cloths of the infant Jesus were brought forth in great 
quantities. The rope with which Judas hanged himself 
was found, and enough of it disposed of to stretch from 
London to Jerusalem. The pole was discovered upon 
which the rooster sat when he crowed when St. Peter 
denied his Lord, together with all the said rooster's tail- 
feathers. Even wonderful relics from the Old Testament 
prophets and patriarchs became common. Among these 
might be mentioned the staff with which Moses miracu- 
lously divided the Red Sea, some of the manna that was 
fed to the children of Israel, the brazen serpent set up 
in the wilderness, thorns from the burning bush, the 
stool from which Eli fell and broke his neck, the shears 
that Delilah used when she cut off Samson's locks, and 
some of Noah's whiskers. 

Nor have Jehovah's ordained representatives on earth 
failed to carry out his ancient laws regarding heresy, 
witchcraft and slavery. They have deluged the earth 
with the blood of victims, have tortured and burned 
heretics, even as Jehovah himself had done in days of 
yore. 

It is estimated, by those who have given the sub- 
ject investigation, that the Papacy, acting as Jehovah's 
agent, during the past thirteen hundred years, has caused 
the death of fifty millions of people. King Henry II, of 
England, in the year 1160, by order of the Catholic Coun- 
cil of Oxford, ordered a company of Waldenses, men 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 193 

and women, to be publicly whipped, branded on the cheek 
with a red-hot iron and driven, half-naked, out of the 
city in the dead of winter; and none were permitted to 
show them pity or grant them the slightest favor. 

Frederick, the Emperor of Germany, in the year 1224, 
sentenced heretics of every description, alive, to the 
flames. Sixty thousand heretics were slaughtered in the 
City of Beziers in 1209. Four hundred were burned 
alive at Lavaur in the year 121 1. The Duke of Alva 
boasted of the execution of 18,000 men and women in 
six weeks. Paola, the historian, reckons the number mar- 
tyred by the Church in the Netherlands at 50,000; and 
Grotius gives the list of Belgian victims at 100,000. It 
is estimated that 70,000 Huguenots were put to death in 
France. There were not as many witches and Quakers in 
Massachusetts as there were Huguenots in France, so the 
Protestant Puritans were unable to score as big a record 
when they butchered witches and Quakers in the name 
of Jehovah as their Catholic mother did with the Hugue- 
nots in France. 

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day began on Au- 
gust 24, 1572. The tolling of the tocsin at midnight, 
August 23, gave the signal. The carnival of death lasted 
seven days. Medals commemorative of the event were 
coined in the Papal mint by order of the Pope and dis- 
tributed among his the faithful. One of these medals 
is on exhibition in Memorial Hall, Philadelphia. Its face 
presents a raised figure of the Pope and the inscription 
"Gregorious XIII, Pontifex Maximus Anno I.'' On the 
reverse side of the medal is a representation of a destroy- 



194 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

ing angel, bearing in the left hand a cross, and in the 
right hand a sword, and before whom a band of Hugue- 
nots, fleeing and prostrated — men, women and children 
— is represented, whose faces and figures express horror 
and despair. 

The Holy Inquisition was established by St. Dominic 
in the thirteenth century. Great, gloomy prisons filled 
the land to hold and torture the victims of the religion 
that teaches the doctrine of everlasting torment. *The 
victims of the Inquisition," says Dowling, **were gen- 
erally apprehended by the officers of the tribunal called 
famiHars. >k * >k j^-^ ^^ (j^^^j Qf ^j^^ night, perhaps, a 

carriage drives up and a knock is heard at the door. An 
inquiry is made from the window, by some member of 
the family rising from his bed, *Who is there?' The 
reply is the terrible words, *The Holy Inquisition !' Per- 
haps the inquirer has an only child, a beloved and cher- 
ished daughter; and almost frozen with terror he hears 
the words, 'Deliver up your daughter to the Holy Inqui- 
sition,' or it may be, 'Deliver up your wife, your father, 
your brother, nor open your lips,' on pain of a like ter- 
rible fate with the destined victim. The trembling vic- 
tim is led out, perhaps totally ignorant of his crime or 
accuser, and immured within those horrid walls through 
which no sigh of agony or shriek of anguish can reach 
the ears of tender and sympathizing friends. The next 
day the family go in mourning; they bewail the lost one 
as dead; consigned not to a peaceful sepulchre, but to a 
living tomb; and strive to conceal even the tears which 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 195 

natural affection prompts, lest the next terrible summons 
should be for them/' 

The Church of Jehovah never willingly gave up the 
prison and torture. When Napoleon captured the city 
of Toledo, he caused the opening of the Inquisition prison 
at that place and of this event the history of the Napo- 
leonic wars says : "Graves seemed to be opened and pale 
figures like ghosts issued from dungeons which emitted 
a sepulchral odor. Bushy beards, hanging down over 
the breast, and nails grown like bird's claws, disfigured 
the skeletons, who with laboring bosoms inhaled, for the 
first time for a long series of years, the fresh air. Many 
of them were reduced to cripples, the head inclined for- 
ward and the arms and hands hanging down rigid and 
helpless. They had been confined in dens so low they 
could not rise up in them, and in spite of all the care of 
the army surgeons many of them expired the same day. 
On the following day General La Salle minutely inspected 
the place, attended by several officers of his staff. The 
number of machines for torture thrilled even men inured 
to the battlefield with horror. In a recess in a subter- 
ranean vault, contiguous to the private hall for examina- 
tions, stood a wooden figure made by the hands of monks 
and representing the Virgin Mary. A gilded glory en- 
compassed her head and in her right hand she held a 
banner. It struck all at first sight as suspicious that, 
notwithstanding the silken robe, descending on each side 
in ample folds from her shoulders, she would wear a 
sort of cuirass. On closer scrutiny it appeared that the 
fore part of the body was stuck full of extremely sharp 



196 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

nails and small knife-like blades with the points of both 
turned toward the spectator. The arms and hands were 
jointed, and machinery behind the partition set the figure 
in motion. One of the servants of the Inquisition was 
compelled by command of the General to work the ma- 
chine, as he termed it. When the figure extended her 
arms, as though to press somebody lovingly to her heart, 
the well-filled knapsack of a Polish grenadier was made 
to supply the place of a living victim. The statue hug- 
ged it closer and closer, and when the attendant, agree- 
ably to orders, made the figure unclasp her arms and re- 
turn to her former position, the knapsack was perforated 
to the depth of two or three inches, and remained hang- 
ing on tlie points of the nails and knife blades." 

Among the various modes of torture used by Jeho- 
vah's priests were dislocation of the joints and breaking 
of the bones by means of pulley, rope and weights ; roast- 
ing the soles of the feet, and suffocation with water, with 
the torment of tightened ropes. 

In the dislocation by the pulley, ropes and weights, a 
pulley was fixed to the roof of the "Hall of Torture," a 
gloomy apartment, usually situated far underground in 
order that the shrieks of the victims might not be heard, 
and a stout cord passed through it. The accused, whether 
male or female, who had dared to deny that His Holiness 
the Pope was God, or that bread and wine consecrated 
by a priest was not actually the flesh and blood of Jesus, 
was then seized and stripped, his or her arms tightly 
wound around the limbs and body, shackles put on the 
feet and hundred pound weights strapped to the ankles. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 197 

Then the man or woman, entirely naked save a cloth 
about the loins, was raised up by a cord fastened around 
the wrists, or, in more obstinate cases, the thumbs, and 
which was passed through the pulley. The heavy weights 
added more agony to the tortured nerves and muscles. 
The heretic was whipped on his or her naked body. The 
rope was suddenly loosened and the victim fell to within 
a foot or two of the ground, thus tearing the tendons and 
dislocating the arms and shoulders and causing fearful 
agony. If the heretic did not recant after all this, and 
had fainted from the intense pain, he or she was removed 
to a filthy dungeon and thrown upon the damp, vermin- 
infested ground, where a surgeon was permitted to set 
the dislocated bones and doctor the torn body, only for 
another renewal of the tortures, to be repeated ofttimes 
from month to month until recantation or death took 
place. 

In the religious rite of roasting the feet, the victim, 
whether a man or woman — often a mere boy or girl — 
was stripped as before by the priests and placed in the 
stocks. The soles of the feet were well greased with lard 
to make them burn better. The Protestant Christians, 
when they burned a witch at the stake, used tar instead 
of lard — so, it will be noted, the difference between the 
two creeds is largely the difference between tar and lard. 

But to return to the ceremony of roasting a heretic's 
feet; after the feet were well greased with lard, and as 
they were protruding from the oaken stocks, a blazing fire 
of coals in a consecrated dish was placed under them. 



198 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

With the first shriek of agony a board was inserted be- 
tween the blaze and the roasting feet, and the victim 
asked to recant. If he or she refused, the torture was 
repeated, and kept up until the feet were completely 
burned off. 

The torture of the tightened ropes and suffocation by 
water was a favorite method for female victims. The ac- 
cused was stripped and tied to a wooden horse, or to a 
hollow bench, and so tightly were the cords drawn that 
they cut through the flesh of the arms, thighs and legs to 
the very bone. In this situation the woman was forced to 
swallow seven pints of water, slowly dripped into her 
mouth on a piece of silk or linen, which was frequently 
forced down her throat, producing all the horrible sen- 
sations of drowning. Every motion of the body forced 
the cords further and further through the quivering and 
bleeding flesh. 

Then there was the thumbscrew, a nice little piece of 
mechanism that they screwed on the thumbs of heretics 
till the blood spurted through the flesh. And there was 
the iron rack and wheel, that tore and broke and crushed 
the sinews and bones. 

Then there was the auto da fe. The term "auto da 
fe" means an "act of faith,'' and refers to a public whole- 
sale burning of heretics alive. It was done after the vic- 
tims had been tortured and lacerated by the methods al- 
ready described, and still lived. Tlie victims of the auto 
da fe were lined up in a great procession, and headed 
by Jehovah's priests, were marched to the place of burn- 
ing. 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 199 

The victims of the auto da fe were dressed according 
to the eternal fate that awaited their souls. They wore 
the "san benito/' the "coroza/' the rope around the neck, 
and carried in their hands a yellow wax candle. The **san 
benito" is a penitential garment of yellow cloth reaching 
down to the knees, and on it is painted the picture of the 
person wearing it, burning in the flames, wi^ the features 
drawn up in agony, and surrounded by figures of drag- 
ons and devils in the act of fanning the flames. This 
costume worn by the auto da fe victim indicated that 
the wearer was a hopeless heretic who was to be first 
burned alive, and then was to burn in Hell forever. If 
the victim has become penitent, and is converted before 
being led to slaughter, then the san benito is painted with 
the flames downward; this is called the ^'fuego repolto," 
and indicates that the penitent is not to be burned alive, 
but is to have the favor of being strangled to death be- 
fore being thrown into the flames. Besides being allowed 
to be strangled to death before the remains are roasted, 
the penitent is not consigned to Hell after he is dead. 
He only goes to Purgatory, from which any holy father 
can get him out if his relatives will pay the price. 

The "coroza'' is a pasteboard cap, three feet high and 
ending in a point. On it were painted crosses, devils and 
flames. 

Take it altogether and the Holy Inquisition is the 
most fitting example of faith and fellowship that the 
Christian follow^ers of Jehovah ever pulled ofif. It is 
worthy the admiration of the god that stalked through 
Eg}Tt ^t midnight butchering innocent babies; the god 



200 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

that ordered all the men and women and male children of 
the Midianites slaughtered, and only the yotmg girls to 
6e saved and turned over to the Hebrew soldiers; the 
god that ordered that all those who did not worship him 
in the orthodox way should be put to death ; the god that 
stoned a woman found in adultery, and made a man pay 
a small fine for the same offense; the god that punished 
David for murdering Uriah by having David's wives 
outraged in daylight on the streets of Jerusalem ; the god 
that was a friend to this same David, because he offered 
up human sacrifices; the god that ordained polygamy and 
slavery, that hung witches, bored holes in the ears of 
slaves, loved the sight of torture and the smell of burn- 
ing flesh — the god of war, rapine, rape and sacrifice — 
to the glory of this god, and in accordance with the laws 
and commandments given by this god, the Holy Inquisi- 
tion did its bloody work. 

The morals of some of Jehovah^s most illustrious rep- 
resentatives, since his own retirement from active serv- 
ice, are strikingly similar to those of his old-time holy 
men. Starting with the tenth century began what is 
known in history as the "Roman regime of harlots.*' 
Common prostitutes ruled Rome, from the parish priest 
to the Apostolic chair. St. Solomon would have been 
delij5fhted to have been there. 

It doesn't appear to have been divine authority, but a 
woman by the name of Marozia. the mistress of the Mar- 
^ave Adelbert of Tuscany, that got Sergius III his job 
as pope, and then produced a son by him, who afterwards 
became pope. When Sergius died, Anastasius II, who 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 201 

was the paramour of a sister of Marozia, named Theo- 
dora, became pope. Anastasius, however, didn't fill the 
holy office to suit Marozia and her sister, and he was soon 
succeeded by Pope John X, another of Marozia's lovers. 
But John and Marozia had a quarrel, and the latter had 
John imprisoned and strangled. Then this enterprising 
woman put her own son by Sergius on the papal seat and 
he reigned as Jehovah's representative on earth tmder the 
title of John XI, till an enemy of his had him kidnaped 
and poisoned. 

Antipapist writers of this period narrate that between 
the reigns of Pope Leo IV and Pope Benedict III, there 
was a pope named John VII, who was in reality a woman. 
This woman is said to have accompanied her lover, dis- 
guised as a young man, to Paris, where she studied with 
him and became so proficient in theology that she was 
given holy orders, her sex being kept a secret. Subse- 
quently she came to Rome, and was finally ele\^ated to 
the papal chair. As stated, she was known as John VII, 
and, so the story runs, she became not only intimate with 
all the dead saints, but also with some of the living ; 
until, in fact, in due time the "holy father" felt that '^he" 
was about to become a holy mother. An angel appeared 
to her who offered her the choice of being eternally 
damned, or to be publicly disgraced. The Pope John 
VII — afterwards dubbed the popess Johanna — didn't 
v/ant to go to Hell, so she accepted the latter alternative, 
and was finally delivered of a little popelet while being 
carried in open procession between tlie Coliseum and 
the Church of St. Clemens. 



202 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

Burkhardt, the Master of Ceremonies of Pope Alexan- 
der VI, has described in his diary the hfe at the papal 
court. Among other things he says that "the Apostolic 
palace became a brothel, and a more shameful and infa- 
mous brothel than a public place of that kind could ever 
become/' He tells of a scene that occurred on the eve 
of All Saints' Day, in the year 1501, in the rooms of 
Caesar Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, and in 
the presence of Lucretia Borgia, sister of Caesar, where- 
in, says Burkhardt, "fifty of the most prominent courte- 
sans (in Rom.e) were present, who, after supper, were 
required to dance with the servants and others who at- 
tended, first with their clothes on, and afterwards naked." 
What followed afterv^^ards, as described by Burkhardt, is 
not printable. His Holiness Pope Alexander VI, to- 
gether with his own offspring, Caesar and Lucretia Bor- 
gia, were entertained by the vilest scenes that degraded 
creatures could conceive. 

The bloody and licentious lives of Caesar Borgia and 
his sister Lucretia are well known matters of history. 
Latter-day investigations, however, would indicate that 
Lucretia was but a pliant tool in the hands of her father 
and the papacy. Pope Alexander VI, who was, before 
his elevation to the papacy, Roderigo Borgia, was the 
father of five illegitimate children, among whom were 
the notorious Caesar and Lucretia. Alexandre Dumas 
says in his history of ''Celebrated Criminals" (Vol. i, 
page 31) : "Roderigo Borgia had the reputation of a 
dissolute man, it is true, but libertinism had mounted the 
papal throne with Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, so that 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 203 

for the Romans there was nothing new in the singular 
situation of a pope with a mistress and five children." 

A more precious pack of poisoners, incest fiends and 
all-around monsters than the Borgias never lived cmi 
earth. They tried to outrank Jehovah himself. The 
males of this breed were guilty of every abomination 
known to man, from debauching their own sisters and 
daughters to wholesale murder. A fresco of Pope Alex- 
ander VI adorns the Vatican. This renowned represen- 
tative of Jehovah is still thus honored by the holy fathers. 

At this time began the Renaissance period and the re- 
vival of the heathen arts and learning. The art of print- 
ing had been given to the world by Johannes Gutten- 
berg about the middle of the fifteenth century, and had 
been named by the papacy as ''an invention of the Devil." 
Pope Alexander, fearful that printing would put an end 
to the profligate lives of the Roman prelates and destroy 
their religion, introduced the censorship of books which 
exists to this day. 

It is historically told that Pope Julius III and Cardinal 
Crescentius kept mutual concubines and mutually raised 
and reared the children they begot, because neither of 
them knew who was their father. Pope Julius, we are 
told, once had a round-up of all the prostitutes in Rome 
and no less than 40,000 were found. His nuntius, Johanna 
Casr of Benevent, wrote a book in which the practice of 
sodomy is extolled. The book was published in Venice 
in 1552 and affectionately dedicated to his holiness the 
Pope. 

It was Pope Urban VII, v/ho died in 1644, that pro- 



204 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

mulgated the bull that is still read on the Thursday be- 
fore Easter in Roman Catholic countries, and which de- 
clares that ''every species of heretic is consigned to the 
very lowest depths of Hell, in the name of the Almighty 
God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost/' 

Protestant evangelists use the same kind of persuasion 
to convert little children. 

Nicholas de Clemancis, who lived in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and who was a papal private secretary, and treas- 
urer and canon of the Church at Longresy, has given a 
graphic portrayal of the lives of the bishops, canons and 
vicars. He says: 

"They keep, without shame, their illegitimate children 
and prostitutes, like lawful wives." Again he states : 
"The priests and clericals live in open concubinage and 
pay their concupiscent tribute to their bishops. In many 
places the laymen can prevent the debauchery of their 
wives and maidens in no other w^ay than compelling the 
priests to keep concubines." 

Interesting evidences of the lives of the priests of this 
period are contained in the writings of physicians. These 
writings complain that venereal diseases were transmitted 
by the priests to private families to a horrible extent. 
Casper Torella, private physician to Pope Alexander VI, 
tried to admonish the cardinals and the clergy in general 
to be more moderate in their vices. He begged them 
"not to commit these excesses in the mornings, immedi- 
ately after mass, but in the afternoons and after thorough 
digestion, as otherwise they would suffer with consump- 
tton, salivation and kindred diseases, as a result of their 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH '205 

sinfulness, and the Church would thereby be deprived of 
her brightest ornaments/' 

It is told that Dr. Wendlin Hock once called on the 
Duke of Wurtemberg to try and get him to stop the licen- 
tiousness of the priests, who, he said, were contaminating 
the whole country with foul diseases. Some physicians 
were malicious enough to express the fear that the holy 
fathers would transmit their diseases to Heaven. 

The Jews, once the chosen people of the God Jehovah, 
became, after the sacrifice of Jesus, infidels and god-kill- 
ers — infidels because they denied the doctrine of the Trin- 
ity — the three-gods-in-one — and god-killers because they 
had sacrificed Jehovah's son. 

And yet Jehovah had once warned them never to w^or- 
ship any god but himself; and Jehovah himself had plan- 
ned and purposed the sacrifice of Jesus ; and investigation 
shows that Jesus was crucified by Roman soldiers, and 
not by the Jews, on the charge of sedition. 

But the priests of Jehovah, along in the third or fourth 
century, wrote in their New Testament a passage in 
which it is alleged that certain Jews at the time of the 
crucifixion of Jesus said, "let his blood be upon us and 
our children,'' and this justifies, in the sight of the Chris- 
tian god, the atrocities that for centuries the Christians 
have perpetrated upon the Jews. 

The laws enacted against the Jews in every Christian 
country in Europe extended into the middle of the last 
century — and still exist where the Holy Greek Catholic 
Church has its hold on the people. As late as 1825, 
says MacDonald's ''History of the Inquisition," the Ro- 



206 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

man Catholic pope ''dug up the old laws against the 
Jews and put them in force. In 1858 the Inquisition ab- 
ducted a seven-year-old Jewish boy, claiming that he had 
been baptized by a servant girl, and therefore belonged 
to the Roman Catholic Church.'' 'In 1882 began in 
Russia a persecution of the Jews that rivalled some of 
the savage hunts of the earlier centuries.'' And these 
old hunts were sure savage. An Apache couldn't steel 
his heart to do it — it takes Jehovah's faithful followers 
to conjure tortures and slaughters that are but a fore- 
taste of the horrors of Hell. Constantine ''cut off their 
ears (Jews) and dispersed them as slaves in the prov- 
inces." (MacDonald's History of the Inquisition, page 

258.) 

Constantine is a canonized saint in the Catholic calen- 
dar. 

When America is made Catholic you will have to pray 
to him. 

The Roman Catholic Council of Toledo, in the year 
633, decreed ''that all children of Jews should be taken 
from their parents and put into monasteries, or into the 
hands of religious persons, to be instructed in Christian- 
ity." (Fleury, History Ecclesiasticismi, chapter VIII.) 

Milman, in his "History of Latin Christianity," dwells 
on the frightful massacres of Jews by the Christians in 
the middle centuries. When the crusaders started across 
Europe to capture Jerusalem from the Moslems, they 
strengthened their faith by devastating Jewish settle- 
ments, slaughtering the Jews and taking their money 
and valuables.. At the capture of Jerusalem the Jewish 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 207 

men, women and children found there were butchered in 
cold blood by the Christians. 

The Christians were evidently afraid the Jews might 
kill another one of their gods if they were left alive in 
Jerusalem. 

Not only did the Crusaders, by order of the monks, 
murder the Jews in the Holy Land, but the Jews of Eu- 
rope were taxed to pay the expenses of the Crusaders. 

Christian financiering is something fierce. 

In England, when the religious raiders were being 
gathered together to march on to Jerusalem under Rich- 
ard Coeur de Lion, "of sacred memory," the Jews of 
"Stamford, Norwich, York, St. Edmondsbury, and other 
places were massacred." (MacDonald's History of the 
Inquisition, page 261.) These religious raiders piously 
pocketed all the coin and jewelry found on the persons 
and in the premises of the dead Jews. 

Thus was the Christian's god once more avenged on 
the race who had crucified his son, which same crucifixion 
had in long ages past been decreed by the Christian god 
in order to save those who believed the doctrine of a 
bloody atonement. 

In the year 1290 a general edict went forth in England 
expelling all Jews from the kingdom, their property be- 
ing confiscated by the crown. "For nearly four centuries 
from that time no Jew resided in England but at the 
hazard of his life." St. Louis of France twice banished 
all Jews from France after he had taken possession of 
all the wealth they possessed. And then this sainted king, 
learning that the banished French Jews had gathered to- 



208 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

gether some money again, did twice recall them back to 
France. 

Under Pope John XXII it was perfectly proper to burn 
Jews. Says Milman, in his "History of the Jews/' page 
548, speaking of this time : "The Jews were burned witii- 
out distinction. At Chinon a deep ditch w^as dug, an 
enormous pile raised, and one hundred and sixty of both 
sexes were burned.'' In Basle a wooden building was 
constructed and all the Jews in the city were shut up 
therein and burned alive. "At Frankfort all were put 
to death. All were burnt at Ulm. At Mayence twelve 
thousand perished. There was wholesale massacre at 
Spires. At Strasburg two thousand were burnt in their 
own burial ground." (MacDonald's History of the In- 
quisition, pages 262-263.) 

Incited by Archdeacon Martinez, in the year 1391, the 
Christians of Seville, Spain, murdered four thousand 
Jews for killing one of their gods in Jerusalem in the first 
century. During this same year — 1391 — it is estimated 
that fifty thousand Jews were slaughtered in various parts 
of Spain. 

Under Protestantism the Jews were persecuted worse 
than ever. 

Of the treatment of the Jews, under Martin Luther's 
"reformation," McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia says : 
"It is a fact that all through Germany, where the Protes- 
tant element, if anywhere, was strong in those days, their 
lot (the Jew^s) actually became harder than it had ever 
been before." Even to this day, in some parts of the 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 209 

Christian world, the Christian Jew-baiter still shows his 
hatred of the Jew. 

And yet one of the Christians' gods is half Jew, and 
if he had not been sacrificed to Jehovah not even the 
Christians themselves would be saved. Truly, as St. 
Paul has said, "great is the mystery of godliness." 

It was Martin Luther, just referred to, who caused 
the first serious rupture among Jehovah's Christian fol- 
lowers. He was a monk, and a student of the inspired 
books, and he finally came to the conclusion that the 
popes were not conducting Jehovah's affairs in a proper 
manner. The ordained priests of the papacy, he con- 
tended, were collecting entirely too much money for ab- 
solving sinners. 

At that time these priests were doing a flourishing busi- 
ness, especially among the rich nobility, selling indulg- 
ences. These indulgences not only washed away tlie sin- 
ners' sins in Jesus' blood, but, according to the price paid 
for them, allowed the sinner to keep right on sinning, for 
a specified time, into the future. When the time was up 
all the sinner need do was to buy another indulgence. 

Luther prepared a cheaper plan than this. He told the 
people that all that was necessary, in order to have their 
sins washed away, was to confess themselves to Jeho- 
vah himself, for which Jehovah would not charge a cent. 
This looked so good to the Christians that a large num- 
ber of them forsook the pope and followed after Luther. 

Another reason that caused Luther to fall out with the 
pope was that he wanted to marry, and have a wife of 
his own. He had grown tired of the system of making 



210 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

love to other men*s wives. So Luther started what is 
known as the Reformation. As soon as they were strong 
enough, the Protestants, as these revolters against the 
pope were called, prosecuted their religious work just 
as strenuously as the popes, or Jehovah himself ever 
did. Wherever they obtained a foothold they tortured 
and hung and burned Catholics with the same holy zeal 
that the Jews, under Jehovah's command, had done with 
the Midianites, or that the Catholics, under command of 
the pope, had been doing with the Protestants. 

Of course both Protestants and Catholics, as before 
mentioned, continued to kill Jews, infidels and scholars. 

In Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, 
Scotland — wherever the Protestants became powerful 
enough, they faithfully followed the bloody footsteps of 
their God Jehovah. To quote from Henry White's "Mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew" ; this writer says, referring to 
the now numerous Protestants, "in fierce invective they 
were by no means inferior to their persecutors." After 
the fall of Rouen, the Huguenots "massacred all the 
priests they found in Pulviers." "We read of their drag- 
ging priests into Dieppe tied to their horses' tails, and 
flogging them at beat of drum in the market place. Some 
were thrown into the sea in their sacerdotal robes ; some 
were fastened to a cross and dragged through the streets 
by ropes around their necks ; and, to crown all, some were 
buried in the ground up to their shoulders, while the 
Huguenots, as if playing a game of nine-pins, flung huge 
wooden balls at their heads. * * * The Protestants of 
Bayeux * * * gutted the bishop's palace, and made a 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 211 

bonfire of the chapter library, then the richest in France. 
The priests and qthers who opposed them were barbar- 
ously murdered and tossed from the walls into the ditch'' 
(pages 240-241). ^'Children were murdered in their 
mother's arms." 

To further quote from the same authority : *'Here, too, 
more priests were buried up to the neck, and their heads 
made to serve as targets for bullets." The writer then 
describes a particular case, that of the Catholic priest of 
St. Guen; he was roasted alive, and, when his flesh was 
done to a turn it was cut up into chunks and fed to a pack 
of dogs. 

Jehovah, looking down from his gold throne, must have 
enjoyed this even more than he did the spectacle of Jeph- 
thah butchering his daughter and roasting her remainis 
on a stone altar. 

The historian describes a religious rite that the Protes- 
tants performed at Angouleme : 'Triests or Catholic peo- 
ple were killed by hanging, speared to death, left to die of 
hunger, sawn in two, or burned at a slow fire." "At 
Montbrun a woman was burned on her legs and feet with 
red-hot tongs. The lieutenant-general oi Angouleme and 
the wife of the lieutenant-general of that city were first 
mutilated, then strangled, and their corpses dragged 
through the streets. At Chasseneuil, in the vicinity, a 
priest, one Loys Fayard, was shot to death after having 
his hands plunged into burning oil, some of which had 
been poured into his mouth. The Vicar of St. Ausanni 
was mutilated, shut up in a closet, and burned to death. 
In the parish of Rivires others had their tongues cut off, 



212 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

their feet burned, and their eyes torn out; they were 
hung up by the legs, or thrown from the walls. Other 
atrocities were committed which cannot be described 
without offending propriety." 

It reads like Jehovah's own record, as told in the di- 
vinely inspired Old Testament. 

Says McDonald (History of the Inquisition, page 
350) : "At Nimes, on St. Michael's Day, 1567, occurred 
a massacre of Catholics by Huguenots. Ranging in rank 
from the vicar-general down, between seventy and eighty 
Catholics were dragged into the old courtyard and butch- 
ered in cold blood. In September of the following year 
the streets of the city were again wet with Catholic 
blood." 

To again quote White: "Orthez was stormed, and so 
many of the inhabitants (Catholics) were put to death 
without distinction of age or sex, that the river Gave 
was dammed up by the number of bodies thrown into it. 
The monasteries and nunneries were burned, not one in- 
mate escaping — the total slaughter being estimated at 
3,000" (pages 308-309). At Aurillac the Protestants 
"buried some Catholics alive up to the chin, and aifter a 
series of filthy outrages, used their heads as targets for 
their muskets. Four hundred persons were put to death, 
of whom 130 were heads of families" (page 310). 

Baron D'Adrets was a convert of Luther's — one of 
the wealthy noblemen who saved money by confessing 
his sins to Jehovah instead of a priest. He lived in a 
castle, in the tower of which he held Catholics whom he 
had captured. "He would sometimes amuse himself by 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 213 

making his prisoners leap from the top of the tower, or 
from a high window, on the pikes of his soldiers sta- . 
tioned below/' At Montbrison, under this Protestant 
nobleman, "more than eight hundred men, women and 
children were murdered; the streets were strewn with 
corpses, and 'the gutters looked as if it had rained blood,' 
says a contemporary'' (ibid., pages 231-232). 

McGhee, in his "History of the Attempt to Establish 
the Protestant Reformation in Ireland," describes the 
manner in which the followers of Luther tried to con- 
vert Dermid O'Hurley, Archbishop of Cashel. He was 
taken to Stephen's Green, in the city of Dublin, in the 
year 1583, chained to a tree, his boots filled with con>» 
bustibles, "his limbs stripped and smeared with oil and 
alcohol. Alternately they lighted and quenched the flame 
which enveloped him, prolonging his torture through four 
successive days." 

With all this persuasion Archbishop O'Hurley refused 
to worship Jehovah in the manner prescribed by Martin 
Luther; so, on the fifth day, the Protestants gave up 
and burned him to a crisp. 

In Kilmallock "were then taken Patrick O'Hely, 
Bishop of Mayo; Father Cornelius, a Franciscan, and 
some others. To extort from them confessions of the 
new faith, their thighs were broken with hammers, and 
their arms crushed with levers." 

In 1536, Martin Luther, then in the zenith of his 
power, wrote to his rich and powerful backer, Philip, 
Landgrave of Hesse, the following rules regarding those 
who refused to become converted to Protestantism : 



214 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

"Whoever denies the doctrines of our faith — aye, even 
one article which rests on the scripture, on the authority 
of the universal teaching of the Church — must be treated 
not only as a heretic, but also as a blasphemer of the 
holy name of God. It is not necessary to lose time in 
disputes with such people; they are to be condemned as 
impious blasphemers." Of such, says Luther in the same 
letter, '^drive him away as an apostle of Hell; and if he 
does not flee, deliver him up as a seditious man to the 
executioner/' 

There is no doubt as to the genuineness of Luther's 
religion. 

He followed Jehovah's ordained statutes to the limit. 

He believed in the divine right of kings, human slavery, 
and polygamy; that is, he believed in the God Jehovah. 

When the peasants of Germany arose in rebellion 
against being pillaged and beaten, and their wives and 
daughters ravished at will by the barons, Luther faith- 
fully stood by the king and his lords, even as Jehovah 
stood by King David. He declared : 

"A rebel is outlawed of God and Kaiser. Therefore 
who can and will first slaughter such a man, does right 
well, since upon such a common rebel every man is alike 
judge and executioner. Therefore who can, shall openly 
or secretly smite, slaughter and stab; and hold that there 
is nothing more poisonous, more harmful, more devilish 
than a rebellious man." 

With this holy sanction the barons had their rebellious 
peasants racked, and flayed alive, and burned at the stake. 
Their tongues were torn out by red-hot pincers. They 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 215 

were tortured with every conceivable invention of agony. 
Jehovah himself, retired on his throne in Heaven, could 
hardly have beat it. 

It is a matter of history that Luther, following Jeho- 
vah's ordinances, tried to institute polygamy. Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton, in his ^'Discussions on Philosophy and 
Literature," writes: 

"They (Luther and Melanchthon) had both promul- 
gated opinions in favor of polygamy, to the extent of 
vindicating to the spiritual minister a right of private 
dispensation, and to the temporal magistrate the right of 
establishing the practice, if he chose, by public law." 

This was a "feeler." Later on Luther and Melanch- 
thon became more bold in their utterances.. As it was 
and acting upon the broad hint just quoted, John of Ley- 
don, a wealthy convert to Protestantism, established 
polygamy as a divinely ordained institution (and, accord- 
ing to the Bible, it is) at Munster, and killed or banished 
anybody who opposed the idea. 

On December 19, 1539, at Wittenberg, Luther wrote 
the historical "Consilium " granting to his friend Philip, 
Landgrave of Hesse, the right to run a harem, even as 
did the holy men of God of old. This document bears 
the signature of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, 
Martin Bucer, Dionysius Melander, John Lening, Antony 
Corvinus, Adam Kraft, Justus Winther, and Balthasar 
Raida — ^the leading Protestant representatives of Jehovah 
in Germany. 

It IS also a matter of history that LutHer advised Henry 
VTIT of England, founder of the Episcopal Church of 



216 LIFEOFJEHOVAH 

Jehovah, to practice polygamy. But King Henry did 
not like to have so many women around at one time; so 
he adopted the plan of beheading one before he married 
another. An accusation of adultery, or even heresy, made 
this conformable to Jehovah's ordinances. 

One of the most noted characters that the Reforma- 
tion brought into the limelight was John Calvin, founder 
of the Presbyterian Qiurch of Jehovah. Calvin hated 
the Lutherans as much as the Lutherans hated the Cath- 
olics. He called them "sons of the Devil.'* 

Calvin preached the "doctrine of election," as decreed 
by the divinely inspired St. Paul. This declares that 
Jehovah had predestined all those who are to go to Heaven 
and all those who are to go to Hell. It appears to be a 
sort of "fifty-fifty" deal between Jehovah and the Devil. 
He also taught the damnation of unbaptized infants. 
These two tidings of great joy form the foundation of 
the Presbyterian faith. 

In Switzerland, Calvin's word became law. If a man 
neglected to take off his hat when passing Calvin on the 
street, he was put in jail. One man, Gruet, was beheaded 
because letters making fun of Calvin were found in his 
possession. 

Calvin started out to convert the world to Presbyte- 
rianism by killing people that had any brains. The Pr^- 
b3i:erian Church to this day bears ample evidence of its 
origin. Calvin burned the learned Dr. Servetus at the 
stake after keeping him in a filthy dungeon for months, 
naked, half-starved, and tormented with vermin. Calvin 
carried his creed as far as Holland and Scotland, and 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 217 

then Jehovah gathered him in. He is now an angel in 
Heaven. 

As time went on Protestantism divided itself into many 
and divers creeds; all of which, however, acknowledge 
Jehovah — or rather the three gods in one, of which Jeho- 
vah is comprised — as their God. Faithfully, even as the 
Catholics from which they sprang, have these creeds en- 
deavored to follow Jehovah's commands. They have 
taught the people to be "subject to the powers that be," 
for all these powers are "ordained of God.'' They have 
warned slaves to obey their masters, and have led mil- 
lions upon millions to slaughter in war. They have hung 
and burned witches without number, as they followed 
Jehovah's law, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." 

Dr. Sprenger places the number of witches executed in 
Europe, to the glory of Jehovah, at nine millions. 

In public sight, at Salem, Massachusetts, stood the 
gallows where the Puritan followers of Jehovah hung 
toothless old women, charged with the crime of witch- 
craft. 

The Puritans also hung Quakers for worshiping Je- 
hovah the wrong way. 

"Giving up witchcraft," said John Wesley, "is, in ef- 
fect, giving up the Bible" (Wesley's Journal, published 

1768). 

To be sure it is. 

William Blackstone says: "To deny the possibility — 
nay, actual existence — of witchcraft and sorcery is at 
once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in 
various passages both of the Old and New Testaments." 



218 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

And Matthew Hale says : "The Bible leaves no doubt 
as to the reality of witchcraft and the duty of putting its 
subjects to death." 

"I should have no compassion on these witches," said 
Martin Luther; "I would burn them all." 

Tlie institution of slavery, ordained by Jehovah, was 
sustained and sanctified by his representatives in this 
country until abolished under the direction of an unbe- 
lieving President. Says Parker Pillsbury, in his "Acts 
of the Anti-Slavery Apostles" (page 361) : "We had 
almost to abolish the Church before we could reach the 
dreadful institution at all." 

Alas! how many of Jehovah's most cherished institu- 
tions have his followers been unable to maintain ! Bloody 
wars, and the servility of the poor to their masters, are 
about all that are left to remind us of this god. 

When these go, there will be no more history to write 
about Jehovah. 



CONCLUSION 

Countless are the legends of the gods of old, of whom 
Jehovah of the Jews is but one; legends of the time 
when the gods descended from their thrones in the skies 
and ordered the affairs of men. 

All these gods led in war, and rapine, and revenge, 
and raped the daughters of earth. Jupiter the all-pow- 
erful, with the bolts of thunder in his hand; Juno, the 
mother of Vulcan, the chariot builder, and Mars, the 
god of War; Isis and Osiris, Baal and Moloch, Odin 
and Thor, and Esus, devourer of virgins' blood; these, 
and myriads more. Many are dead, many more are 
forgotten, and all are silent now; silent as the voiceless 
Jehovah of whom these tales are told. 

Back beyond the dawn of history, Man, fearful, hope- 
ful, superstitious, blindly sought the Source of Life. 
The earliest of known religions was Fetish worship. 
The mountains, the forests, the valleys, the rivers and 
streams, the very air, to savage man were peopled with 
gods and demons. The lightning and thunder, the 
earthquake and tornado, were the angry expressions of 
offended deities. The soughing of the winds at night, 
the murmuring of the brooks — ^these were the voices of 
the good-natured gods. He worshiped them all, good 



220 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

and bad, deities and demons. It kept him busy, trying 
to keep his gods in good humor. 

Then came a time when the Source of Life was made 
in the image and Hkeness of the sexual organs. The 
mystery of conception and birth became a thing of wor- 
ship, and the PhalHc religion, traces of which are found 
in nearly all races, became what the theologians would 
declare "orthodox." Temples were decorated with 
carvings and images of the sexual organs. The 
totem poles, still found among the Alaskan Indians, are 
male emblems of this ancient worship. One of these 
has been unearthed in the ruins of King Solomon's tem- 
ple in the form of a magnificent pillar, showing tliat even 
the Jews, at that period, paid homage to the Phallic faith. 
People still hang a horse-shoe over the door little realiz- 
ing that this is but the shadowy reminder of the one- 
time carving of the female organ of generation. Christian 
churches — which ar-e copied after the old pagan temples 
— still point skyward their steeples, which are nothing 
more or less than modified totem poles. 

Then there were the Sun worshipers of Babylon and 
Persia. This worship was the religion of the Peruvians, 
when the Europeans came to America. Our Christ- 
mas feast, occurring just as the Sun begins to lengthen 
the days, portent of the returning spring, comes 
straight to us from the old Sun worshipers. In all tlie 
old — as well as the present — religions, memories of still 
older religions have formed a part. Thus the Yuletide 
celebration — our Christmas — was preserved, but made to 
celebrate the birth of Christ. And so every stage of hu- 



LIFE OF JEHOVAH 221 

man society has had its dififerent deities, its different 
styles of worship. The religions of all peoples and at all 
times have been conceived to fit the social period in 
which they existed. 

When the race began to form class distinctions — when 
the ruler and the ruled, the master and the slave, appeared 
— then the gods took upon themselves the image and like- 
ness of the ruling classes. It would not do for the rulers 
and masters to have any sort of a god except like unto 
themselves. The common people — the exploited work- 
ers — would not have any respect for the rulers and mas- 
ters, imless they were taught to worship a god that was 
also a ruler and master. The Roman Jupiter must dwell 
in majesty upon Mount Olympus, and the Christian Jeho- 
vah must sit still further up the skies, upon a gorgeous, 
golden throne, else thrones, rulers and masters would all 
tumble down together. That is why all the rulers and 
masters "love God." 

The world's toilers have ne\^er had a God of their own 
— they have always knelt to both their earthly masters 
and their earthly masters' God, and if they would but 
open their eyes when they pray, instead of shutting them 
tight as they do, they would be surprised to note how 
much their God and their masters resemble each other. 
Millions have now done this, and have turned away from 
both the masters and the masters' God. Of course these 
are damned by the masters and the masters' priests as 
"atheists." We care not for this — we laugh at their 
anathemas — we are busy bursting our chains, and it isn't 



222 LIFE OF JEHOVAH 

our fault that the gods are at the same end of the chain 
as the masters. 

But, perchance, the people, free at last from supersti- 
tion and servility, will someday find a Divinity of their 
own. Not a crowned and sceptred royal ruler in the 
skies — a useless lounger on a gilded throne, like the 
earthly ones who made him, — ^but the Tireless Toiler, the 
Soul of Nature, the Builder of Worlds, the Evolver of 
Life, the Lover of Labor, the Source of Science and 
Truth. Not a master-made myth with a Heaven and 
Hell, and a flock of feathered flunkies flying aroimd his 
throne, but One of us, working with us in the upward 
struggle. Not a pompous Lord that wants us to get down 
on our knees and beg his pardon, but a splendid Comrade 
of ours, whose only wish is that we stand up straight and 
fearless, and labor with him in the immortal work of 
evolving a more beautiful world and a better and cleaner 
society of men and women. 



THE END. 



'If it wont stand the fire of the Melting Pot it's no good'' 



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